“Friends, Monsieur! Are we not? Why do you address me like that?”
“Because you treat me as though I were a criminal,” he said earnestly. “As if I had done you an evil in making you my wife. ’Twas not I who hastened the matter, but La Barre. ’Tis not just to condemn me unheard, yet I have been patient and kind. I thought it might be that you loved another––in truth I imagined that De Artigny had cast his spell upon you; yet you surely cannot continue to trust that villain––the murderer of your uncle.”
“How know you that to be true?” I asked.
“Because there is no other accounting for it,” he explained sternly. “The quarrel last evening, the early departure before dawn––”
“At your orders, Monsieur.”
“Ay, but the sergeant tells me the fellow was absent from the camp for two hours during the night; that in the moonlight he saw him come down the hill. Even if he did not do the deed himself, he must have discovered the body––yet he voiced no alarm.”
I was silent, and my eyes fell from his face to the green water.
“’Twill be hard to explain,” he went on. “But he shall have a chance.”
“A chance! You will question him; and then––”