"What--what do you mean?"
"Attend. You hear that noise in the next street; do you know what it is? It is the archers and the exempts carrying of people to prison who are supposed to be insurgents, uprisers against the King, the Regent--the 'System.' Many of those persons are quite innocent, they are simply passers-by seeking their homes. Still, they have, some of them, enemies, people whom they have wronged, perhaps even inadvertently; yet the wronged ones have now their hour. A purse--a very light one--dropped into an archer's or an exempt's hands--a hint--a name--an address--and--that is all! To-night the prisons, La Force, La Pitié, La Tournelle--the Bastille; to-morrow the false accusations--a month later the wheel, or, at best, the Mississippi, the Colonies. And--and--my purse is not light."
"Devil!" she murmured. "Devil incarnate!"
"Ay, an aroused one. Yet, 'tis your own doing. You should have thought, you should have reflected. Desparre's name was known in those choice circles which you and Vandecque affected--in your own gambling hell. Had you ever heard it coupled with so weak a quality as forgiveness for an insult, a slight? Nay, madame, nay! None can prevent either insult or slight being offered--it is only the weak and powerless who do not retaliate. And I, Desparre, am neither." While, once more, as he spoke, the twitchings of his face presented a terrible sight.
"You mean," she said, staring at him as one stares who is fascinated by some horror from which, appalling as it is, the eyes cannot be withdrawn, "you mean that this retaliation is to be visited on me. On me--or, perhaps, one other. The man who enabled me to escape you--on my husband?"
"I mean precisely that. On you. Yet without my purse's weight being much tested, either. For against you, madame, I have legal claims that will, I fear, prevent you from enjoying your new-found happiness for some time, even were your husband able to share it with you, which he is not----"
He stopped. For as he uttered those last words, "which he is not," she had moved from the position in which she had stood all through the interview; she had quitted that barricade which the table made between them; she was advancing slowly round it to him. In her eyes there was a light that terrified him; on her face a look at which he trembled more than even his rage and unstrung nerves had previously caused him to do. For, now, he saw that the victim was an equal foe--that the aroused woman had changed places with him and was calling him to account, instead of being called to account herself.
"Speak!" she said; her voice low, yet clear, her eyes blazing, her whole frame rigid, "speak. Have done with equivocation, with hints and threats. Speak, villain. Answer me." While, as she herself spoke, she raised her hand and pointed it at him. "You say he cannot share my new-found happiness with me. Answer me! Why can he not? Two hours ago he was here, with me, in this room. Where is he now?"
Standing before her, his eyes peering at her--ghastly, horrible; upon his face a look that was half a leer and half a snarl, he essayed to tell her that which he had come to say. Yet, at first, he could utter no word--almost it seemed to him as though he was suffocating, as though his gall were rising and choking him. Yet, still, there was the woman before him, close to him, her hand outstretched, her eyes glaring into his. Again, too, he heard her words:
"My husband! Villain! Scoundrel! Answer me. Where is my husband?"