“Listen, Peyrol. If anybody’s last hour is near, it isn’t mine. You just look about you a little. It was time I spoke to you.”
“Why, I am not going to kill anybody,” muttered Peyrol. “You are getting strange ideas into your head.”
“It is as I said,” insisted Catherine without animation. “Death seems to cling to her skirts. She has been running with it madly. Let us keep her feet out of more human blood.”
Peyrol, who had let his head fall on his breast, jerked it up suddenly. “What on earth are you talking about?” he cried angrily. “I don’t understand you at all.”
“You have not seen the state she was in when I got her back into my hands,” remarked Catherine.... “I suppose you know where the lieutenant is. What made him go off like that? Where did he go to?”
“I know,” said Peyrol. “And he may be back to-night.”
“You know where he is! And of course you know why he has gone away and why he is coming back,” pronounced Catherine in an ominous voice. “Well, you had better tell him that unless he has a pair of eyes at the back of his head he had better not return here—not return at all; for if he does, nothing can save him from a treacherous blow.”
“No man was ever safe from treachery,” opined Peyrol after a moment’s silence. “I won’t pretend not to understand what you mean.”
“You heard as well as I what Scevola said just before he went out. The lieutenant is the child of some ci-devant and Arlette of a man they called a traitor to his country. You can see yourself what was in his mind.”
“He is a chicken-hearted spouter,” said Peyrol contemptuously, but it did not affect Catherine’s attitude of an old sibyl risen from the tripod to prophesy calmly atrocious disasters. “It’s all his republicanism,” commented Peyrol with increased scorn. “He has got a fit of it on.”