"That your heart was in it, M. le Vicomte."
"In what? In what? Speak plainly, man."
"Mademoiselle de St. Alais'--engagement," he said.
I stood a moment staring at him. "Her engagement?" I whispered. "To whom?"
"To M. Froment," he answered.
CHAPTER XXI.
[RIVALS.]
"It is impossible!" I said slowly. "Froment! It is impossible!"
But even while I said it, I knew that I lied; and I turned to the window that Benôit might not see my face. Froment! The name alone, now that the hint was supplied, let in the light. Fellow-traveller, fellow-conspirator, in turn protected and protector, his face as I had seen it at the carriage door in the pass by Villeraugues, rose up before me, and I marvelled that I had not guessed the secret earlier. A bourgeois and ambitious, thrown into Mademoiselle's company, what could be more certain than that, sooner or later, he would lift his eyes to her? What more likely than that Madame St. Alais, impoverished and embittered, afloat on the whirlpool of agitation, would be willing to reward his daring even with her daughter's hand? Rich already, success would ennoble him; for the rest I knew how the man, strong where so many were weak, resolute where a hundred faltered, assured of his purpose and steadfast in pursuing it, where others knew none, must loom in a woman's eyes. And I gnashed my teeth.
I had my eyes fixed, as I thought these thoughts, on a little dingy, well-like court that lay below his window, and on the farther side of which, but far below me, a monastic-looking porch surmounted by a carved figure, formed the centre of vision. Mechanically, though I could have sworn that my whole mind was otherwise engaged, I watched two men come into the court, and go to this porch. They did not knock or call, but one of them struck his stick twice on the pavement; in a second or two the door opened, as of itself, and the men disappeared.