"Canaille!" said the old lady under her breath, and then aloud:
"You are better here, with us. It is more convenable," and once more she patted the shoulder, and that odd sense of being at home brought sudden tears to Aline's eyes.
A few days later a piece of news reached her. She and Marguerite de Matigny sat embroidering the same long strip of silk. They had become close friends in the enforced daily intimacy of prison life, and the luxury of possessing a friend with whom she could revive the old, innocent, free talk of convent times was delightful in the extreme to the lonely girl, forced too soon into a self-reliance beyond her years.
Mlle Marguerite looked up from the brilliant half-set stitch, and glanced warily round.
"Tiens, Aline," she said, putting her small head on one side, "I heard something this morning, something that concerns you."
Aline grew paler. That all news was bad news was one axiom which the events of the last few months had graved deeply on her heart. Marguerite saw the tremor that passed over her, and made haste to be reassuring.
"No, no, ma belle, it is nothing bad. Stupid that I am! It is that these wretches outside have been fighting amongst themselves, and your M. Hébert has been sent to prison. I hope he likes it," and she took a little vicious stitch which knotted her yellow thread, and confused the symmetrical centre of a most gorgeous flower. "There, I have tangled my thread again, and grandmamma will scold me. I shall say it was the fault of your M. Hébert."
"Please don't call him my M. Hébert," said Aline proudly. Marguerite laid down her needle.
"Aline, why did he denounce you?"
"Ah, Marguerite, don't talk of him. You don't know what a wretch—" and she broke off shuddering.