Josephine said nothing. Her face displayed so profound a suffering that it might have touched one. The tears which rolled slowly down her cheeks might have awakened one’s pity, if her grief had not so plainly been dominated by a bitter lust for vengeance. She was making her plans, devising the snare.
Shaking her head, she said to Ralph: “I warned you, Ralph.”
“A man who is warned is worth two,” he said in a joking tone.
“Don’t make a joke of it!” she cried with savage impatience. “You know what I told you, that you had better be careful never to let her cross the path of our love.”
“And you know what I told you,” Ralph retorted with the same irritating air. “If ever you touch a single hair of her head——”
She trembled and said bitterly: “How can you laugh at my suffering like this? How can you take the part of another woman against me?... Against me!” Then she added in quieter, threatening accents: “All the worse for her.”
“Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She’s safe enough, since I’ll protect her.”
Beaumagnan watched them with a gloomy joy; their discord and all this hate that welled up in them warmed his heart. But Josephine recovered control of herself, reckoning, doubtless, that it was a waste of words to speak of a vengeance which would be hers in due time. At the moment other cares thrust this one from her mind, for, a little way off, someone blew a whistle gently.
The grief and fury vanished from her face and she said: “Did you hear that whistle, Beaumagnan? It’s one of my men who are watching the path to the lighthouse. The person for whom we are waiting must be in sight, for I suppose that that’s what you are here for, too?”
Indeed, the presence of Beaumagnan at that place at that hour needed to be accounted for. How had he known of the meeting and the meeting-place? What special information had he with regard to the Rousselin business?