"I knew only the names, Madame," said Aline, lifting her truthful eyes. "And at first I thought all had perished. I dared not ask, and there was no one to tell me."
"Poor child," the hand stopped tapping, and patted her shoulder kindly. "And this Rosalie you speak of, what was she?"
"Sometimes she was kind. I do not think she meant me any harm, and at least she saved my life once."
When she came to the story of her arrest, she faltered a little. The old eyes were so keen.
"What do they accuse you of? You have done nothing?"
"Oh, chère Comtesse, is it then necessary that one should have done anything?" broke in Adèle de Créspigny, a little bitter colour in that faded voice of hers. "Have you done anything, or I, or little Marguerite here?"
Madame fanned herself, her manner slightly distant. She was not accustomed to be interrupted.
"They say I wrote letters to emigrés, to my son Charles, in fact. Marguerite also. It is a crime, it appears, to indulge in family feeling. But, you, you, Mademoiselle, did not even do that."
"No," said Aline, blushing. "It was ... it was that the Citizen Hébert found out my real name—I do not know how—and denounced me."
Her downcast looks filled in enough of the story for those penetrating eyes.