I looked at him in silence. The position was so perplexing that I could not grasp it.
"How do I find you here?" he continued with violence and in a voice that drew every eye in the room to me. He was white with anger. He had left me a prisoner, he found me a guest.
"I hardly know myself," I answered. "But----"
"I do," said a voice behind M. St. Alais. "If you wish to know, Marquis, M. de Saux is here at my invitation."
The speaker was Froment, who had just entered the room. St. Alais turned, as if he had been stabbed. "Then I am not!" he cried.
"That is as you please," Froment said steadfastly.
"It is--and I do not please!" the Marquis retorted, with a scornful glance, and in a tone that rang through the room. "I do not please!"
As I heard him, and felt myself the centre, under the lights, of all those eyes, I could have fancied that I was again in the St. Alais' salon, listening to the futile oath of the sword; and that three-quarters of a year had not elapsed since that beginning of all our troubles, But in a moment Froment's voice roused me from the dream.
"Very well," he said gravely. "But I think that you forget----"
"It is you who forget," St. Alais cried wildly. "Or you do not understand--or know--that this gentleman----"