Her keen, malicious eyes never left the so-called vicomte’s face.
“Well, mademoiselle,” replied Merle, nettled at being always interrupted, “he is so like citizen du Gua, that if your friend did not wear the uniform of the Ecole Polytechnique I could swear it was he.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked fixedly at the cold, impassible young man who had scorned her, but she saw nothing in him that betrayed the slightest feeling of alarm. She warned him by a bitter smile that she had now discovered the secret so treacherously kept; then in a jesting voice, her nostrils dilating with pleasure, and her head so turned that she could watch the young man and yet see Merle, she said to the Republican: “That new leader gives a great deal of anxiety to the First Consul. He is very daring, they say; but he has the weakness of rushing headlong into adventures, especially with women.”
“We are counting on that to get even with him,” said the captain. “If we catch him for only an hour we shall put a bullet in his head. He’ll do the same to us if he meets us, so par pari—”
“Oh!” said the emigre, “we have nothing to fear. Your soldiers cannot go as far as La Pelerine, they are tired, and, if you consent, we can all rest a short distance from here. My mother stops at La Vivetiere, the road to which turns off a few rods farther on. These ladies might like to stop there too; they must be tired with their long drive from Alencon without resting; and as mademoiselle,” he added, with forced politeness, “has had the generosity to give safety as well as pleasure to our journey, perhaps she will deign to accept a supper from my mother; and I think, captain,” he added, addressing Merle, “the times are not so bad but what we can find a barrel of cider for your men. The Gars can’t have taken all, at least my mother thinks not—”
“Your mother?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, interrupting him in a tone of irony, and making no reply to his invitation.
“Does my age seem more improbable to you this evening, mademoiselle?” said Madame du Gua. “Unfortunately I was married very young, and my son was born when I was fifteen.”
“Are you not mistaken, madame?—when you were thirty, perhaps.”
Madame du Gua turned livid as she swallowed the sarcasm. She would have liked to revenge herself on the spot, but was forced to smile, for she was determined at any cost, even that of insult, to discover the nature of the feelings that actuated the young girl; she therefore pretended not to have understood her.
“The Chouans have never had a more cruel leader than the Gars, if we are to believe the stories about him,” she said, addressing herself vaguely to both Francine and her mistress.