‘What do you mean?’ Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting him. ‘If you think that you can prejudice me against this gentleman—’
‘That is precisely what I am going to do! And a little more than that!’ he answered.
‘You will be only wasting your breath!’ she retorted.
‘Wait! Wait, Mademoiselle—-until you have heard,’ he said. ‘For I swear to you that if ever a black-hearted scoundrel, a dastardly sneaking spy trod the earth, it is this fellow! And I am going to expose him. Your own eyes and your own ears shall persuade you. I am not particular, but I would not eat, I would not drink, I would not sit down with him! I would rather be beholden to the meanest trooper in my squadron than to him! Ay, I would, so help me Heaven!’
And the Lieutenant, turning squarely on his heel, spat on the ground.
CHAPTER XI. THE ARREST
It had come, and I saw no way of escape. The sergeant was between us and I could not strike him. And I found no words. A score of times I had thought with shrinking how I should reveal my secret to Mademoiselle—what I should say, and how she would take it; but in my mind it had been always a voluntary act, this disclosure, it had been always I who unmasked myself and she who listened—alone; and in this voluntariness and this privacy there had been something which took from the shame of anticipation. But here—here was no voluntary act on my part, no privacy, nothing but shame. And I stood mute, convicted, speechless, under her eyes—like the thing I was.
Yet if anything could have braced me it was Mademoiselle’s voice when she answered him.
‘Go on, Monsieur,’ she said calmly, ‘you will have done the sooner.’