‘You do not believe me?’ he replied. ‘Then, I say, look at him! Look at him! If ever shame—’
‘Monsieur,’ she said abruptly—she did not look at me, ‘I am ashamed of myself.’
‘But you don’t hear me,’ the Lieutenant rejoined hotly. ‘His very name is not his own! He is not Barthe at all. He is Berault, the gambler, the duellist, the bully; whom if you—’
Again she interrupted him.
‘I know it,’ she said coldly. ‘I know it all; and if you have nothing more to tell me, go, Monsieur. Go!’ she continued in a tone of infinite scorn. ‘Be satisfied, that you have earned my contempt as well as my abhorrence.’
He looked for a moment taken aback. Then,—
‘Ay, but I have more,’ he cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant.
‘I forgot that you would think little of that. I forgot that a swordsman has always the ladies’ hearts—-but I have more. Do you know, too, that he is in the Cardinal’s pay? Do you know that he is here on the same errand which brings us here—to arrest M. de Cocheforet? Do you know that while we go about the business openly and in soldier fashion, it is his part to worm himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame’s intimacy, to listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on your lips, to track you—track you until you betray yourselves and the man? Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie, Mademoiselle? His help, so much bait to catch the secret? His aim blood-money—blood-money? Why, MORBLEU!’ the Lieutenant continued, pointing his finger at me, and so carried away by passion, so lifted out of himself by wrath and indignation, that I shrank before him—‘you talk, lady, of contempt and abhorrence in the same breath with me, but what have you for him—what have you for him—the spy, the informer, the hired traitor? And if you doubt me, if you want evidence, look at him. Only look at him, I say.’
And he might say it; for I stood silent still, cowering and despairing, white with rage and hate. But Mademoiselle did not look. She gazed straight at the Lieutenant.
‘Have you done?’ she said.