She drew from her bodice a small life-preserver, a ball of lead with a whalebone handle. Her eyes grew hard.
Beaumagnan answered: “What I bring you will not make you doubt; it will give you certainty.”
“Speak.... Give me a name.”
“Clarice d’Etigues,” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders and said confidently: “I know all about that; a flirtation of no importance.”
“It was important enough to him since he asked her father’s permission to marry her,” sneered Beaumagnan.
“He asked what? But it’s nonsense! It’s impossible! I got to know all about it. They met one another two or three times in the country—not more.”
“Better than that, they met in the young woman’s set of rooms in the Château.”
“You lie!” she cried.
“What you must mean is that her father is lying, for these facts were confided to me by Godfrey d’Etigues the night before last,” he said in a tone of sinister triumph.