For a moment she stared at him in silence, her lips parted. Then she laughed, a laugh which set the teeth on edge.
“Oh, he is clever!” she cried. “He has the wit of the priests! Or the devil! But you come too late, Monsieur! You come too late! The bird has flown.”
“Mademoiselle—”
“I tell you the bird has flown!” she repeated vehemently. And her laugh of joyless triumph rang through the room. “He is clever, but I have outwitted him! I have—”
She paused and stared about her wildly, struck by the silence; struck too by something solemn, something pitiful in the faces that were turned on her. And her lip began to quiver.
“What?” she muttered. “Why do you look at me so? He has not”—she turned from one to another—“he has not been taken?”
“M. Tignonville?”
She nodded.
“He is below.”
“Ah!” she said.