"Call Captain d'Aubenay," he said now to one of the mousquetaires under the command of De Guise, while, turning to Bevill, he continued. "You will be taken to the citadel; there you will hear the charge against you--the charge upon which, later, you will be tried, as well as upon another, of being present in a city under the control of France while falsely passing as a Frenchman."
To which Bevill made no reply, except a courteous bow, since he deemed silence best.
But, if he had nothing to say, one person at least--the Comtesse de Valorme--saw no reason for also being silent.
Approaching De Violaine, who stood some little distance apart from the rest, she said therefore:
"There is but one man in all Liége who can have denounced your newly acquired prisoner. That man is named Emile Francbois" while, remarking that the other neither assented to nor denied this statement, she added, "It is so, is it not?"
But still De Violaine kept silence, whereupon the Comtesse continued, while adopting now a different form of inquiry--a more impersonal one.
"Whosoever the man may be," she said, "who has thought fit to testify against monsieur, to formulate the charges against him of which you speak--charges of which you could not otherwise have known--he must have sought you out to do so. Monsieur, I beseech of you to at least answer this, even though you answer nothing else."
Whereupon, stung by the coldness of his questioner, stung also by the almost contemptuous tone in which she spoke--she whom once he had loved so much--De Violaine replied:
"The person who has informed against the prisoner waited upon me at the citadel."
"And is present there now to repeat his charges against--the prisoner?"