For answer he handed her with a low bow the paper I had read: "Read that, and see if I need to threaten."
She raised it with an air at once careless and coquettish, and, after reading a few lines, burst out laughing. "We are found out," she said, turning to me, "and General Klapka is vexed, I see, because I sometimes sent a tender message to my lover." When she said that, he made a spring at her which caused me to jump from my chair; but, instead of recoiling, she advanced two steps toward him, as he stood before her panting and furious. "Yes," she said in a clear, high voice, "to Count Loris Kourásoff."
"Mademoiselle, I implore you—" I began.
"What would you have me do?" she said, turning contemptuously to me. "If I am in his power, will anything avail me now? and if I am not in his power, let me say what I please."
"Yes, say what you please," said General Klapka in an intense voice: "it will only bring his destruction a little nearer. If Count—if that—"
"Do not dare to speak Count Kourásoff's name before me!" she cried.
If a man like General Klapka could be cowed by anything, he might be said to have quailed under her voice and presence; she spoke distinctly, and raised her little hand as she advanced nearer him. She stopped abruptly and fanned herself. "Really," she said, "I am losing my temper. You, General Klapka, appear to have lost yours before I came."
"Do you know, Mademoiselle Orviéff, what it is to be secretly communicating with a state prisoner?" said General Klapka, recovering his coolness a little.
"And do you know what it is, General Klapka, to have the discipline of the garrison so lax that a state prisoner can be communicated with, even visited, by his friends and," laughing and nodding her head at me, "his accomplices."
General Klapka could only grind his teeth and mutter, "Communicating with a state prisoner."