"No, but I should like to know. I can see you could tell tales—oh, but most exciting ones! Why did he do it? He must have had some reason; or did he just see you, and hate you, like love at first sight, only the other way round?"
Mlle de Rochambeau assumed an air of prudence and reproof.
"Fi donc, Mlle de Matigny, what would your grandmother say to such talk?"
Marguerite made a little, wicked moue.
"She would say—it was not convenable," she mimicked, and laid a coaxing hand on her friend's knee. "But tell me then, Aline, tell me what I want to know—tell me all about it, all there is to tell. I shall tease and tease until you do," she declared.
"Oh, Marguerite, it is too dreadful to laugh about."
"If one never laughed, because of dreadful things, why, then, we should all forget how to do it nowadays," pouted Marguerite. "But, see then, already I cry—" and she lifted an infinitesimal scrap of cambric to her dancing eyes.
Mlle de Rochambeau laughed, but she shook her head, and Marguerite gave her a little pinch.
"Wicked one," she said; "but I shall find out all the same. All my life I have found out what I wanted to, yes, even secrets of grandmamma's," and she nodded mischievously; but Aline turned back to the original subject of the conversation.
"Are you sure he is in prison?" she asked anxiously.