“Well,” he laughed defiantly. “We shall see all about that, Mademoiselle. We have been long preparing for this coup—for the destruction of your snug little kingdom, and now we are here we shall follow Bismarck’s plan, and not leave your country even their eyes to weep with. It will be swept from end to end—and swept still again and again, until it is Belgian no longer, but German—part of the world-empire of our great Kaiser.”
The fellow did not further disguise that he was a German agent—he who had posed as a patriotic Belgian, was there in Dinant, dressed in Prussian uniform.
The trembling girl stood amazed. The ghastly truth was, to her, one horrible, awful nightmare.
“Your great Kaiser, as you call him, does not intimidate me,” she replied boldly. “Go, Arnaud Rigaux, and leave me to my fate, whatever you decide it to be. I will never accept the friendly offices of a man who is a traitor and a spy.”
Rigaux bit his lip. Those were the hardest words that had ever been spoken to him. He had been on a mission into the German lines, and only by pure chance had he recognised her with Valentin, standing in the Place on the previous night.
His cunning brain was already working out a swift yet subtle revenge. Aimée had attracted him, and he had marked her down as his victim by fair means or by foul. But her defiance had now upset all his calculations. To his surprise she preferred death itself, to the renunciation of her vow to Edmond Valentin.
He hesitated. He held her in his relentless hands. That she knew. Death was to be her fate, and she stood, with pale face, bold and defiant—prepared to meet it.