After that hurried exclamation there was a moment's silence. Carmontelle broke it with an uneasy laugh.
"I am forty years old, but I suppose a man is never too old to make a fool of himself," he said. "I believe you are right, mon ami. I could not get the child out of my head last night. I never noticed how pretty she was before; and those lashes on her sweet, white shoulders. I longed to kiss them, as children say, to make them well."
"Poor child!" said Van Zandt; and then, without preamble, he blurted out the story of what had just happened.
Carmontelle listened with clinched hands and flashing eyes, the veins standing out on his forehead like whip-cords.
"The fiend!" he muttered. "Peste! he was always a sneak, always a villain at heart. More than once we have wished him well out of the club. Now he shall be lashed from the door, the double-dyed scoundrel! And she, the deceitful madame, she could plan this horrid deed! She is less than woman. She shall suffer, mark you, for her sin."
"But the little ma'amselle, Carmontelle? What shall we do to deliver her from her peril? Every passing moment brings her doom nearer, yet I can think of nothing. My brain seems dull and dazed."
"Do? Why, we shall take a carriage and bring her away 'over the garden wall,'" replied Carmontelle, lightly but emphatically.
"Very well; but—next?"
Carmontelle stared and repeated, in some bewilderment: