He had not proceeded far when the Maréchale sent for Cyrène. It was the kind of opportunity in which de Lotbinière gloried. As soon as he commenced she scanned him with intense attention, saying to herself, "This is one of Germain's enemies." As he told his tale he too watched her closely. The courage with which she listened to the development of a story so deeply affecting her honour and her heart, and her perfect dignity, unexpected by him, baffled him, from point to point of his careful narration, where he had expected to produce effects.
"Of all women," he thought, "she is the strangest. Are my skill and effort to be wasted on a girl?" But guessing correctly all at once and rightly attributing her reticence to preparation and distrust of himself, he stopped and said—
"He has doubtless told Madame a very different version."
"He has told me nothing of these things, sir," she answered quietly.
De Lotbinière was nonplussed, but he had not yet come to the duels. He now mentioned them.
"There have been two duels."
"Mon dieu!"
"I hope that your nephew punished him sharply," La Maréchale interrupted.
"The brute, unfortunately, has wounded my nephew, Madame."
"Is your brother-in-law, the Marquis de Répentigny, whom you mentioned, he who killed a man named Philibert in Quebec?" now demanded Cyrène.