“Yes, father.”
“Then it is not natural that you should intend to—”
“If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.”
“Oh! child,” said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but that her husband could hear her, “you are false to all the principles of honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that—”
“Oh, suppose everything, madame,” Hélène said coldly.
But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger, watching her, guessed the mother’s language from the girl’s tears, and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame, such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a Leyden jar.
“Dear!” she cried, turning to her husband, “this is the Fiend himself. He can divine everything!”
The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
“He means ruin for you,” Hélène said to the murderer.
The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General’s arm, and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier’s brain and left him powerless.