“You fear me then? I am right in that.”
“I fear—that which you carry with you,” she stammered, speaking on impulse and scarcely knowing what she said.
He started, and his expression changed. “So?” he exclaimed. “So? You know what I carry, do you? And from whom? From whom,” he continued in a tone of menace, “if you please, did you get that knowledge?”
“From M. La Tribe,” she muttered. She had not meant to tell him. Why had she told him?
He nodded. “I might have known it,” he said. “I more than suspected it. Therefore I should be the more beholden to you for saving the letters. But”—he paused and laughed harshly—“it was out of no love for me you saved them. That too I know.”
She did not answer or protest; and when he had waited a moment in vain expectation of her protest, a cruel look crept into his eyes.
“Madame,” he said slowly, “do you never reflect that you may push the part you play too far? That the patience, even of the worst of men, does not endure for ever?”
“I have your word!” she answered.
“And you do not fear?”
“I have your word,” she repeated. And now she looked him bravely in the face, her eyes full of the courage of her race.