A mysterious emotion, the passion of which gave to her face a dazzling
color, showed that the whole world was nothing to the girl the moment
that one individual was all in all to her. But she suddenly subdued
herself into forced calmness, observing, like a trained actor, that
the spectators were watching her. The commandant rose hastily and went
out. Anxious and agitated, Mademoiselle de Verneuil followed him,
stopped him in the corridor, and said, in an almost solemn tone: "Have
you any good reason to suspect that young man of being the Gars?"
"God's thunder! mademoiselle, that fellow who rode here with you came
back to warn me that the travellers in the mail-coach had all been
murdered by the Chouans; I knew that, but what I didn't know was the
name of the murdered persons,--it was Gua de Saint-Cyr!"
"Oh! if Corentin is at the bottom of all this, nothing surprises me,"
she cried, with a gesture of disgust.
The commandant went his way without daring to look at Mademoiselle de
Verneuil, whose dangerous beauty began to affect him.
"If I had stayed two minutes longer I should have committed the folly
of taking back my sword and escorting her," he was saying to himself
as he went down the stairs.
As Madame du Gua watched the young man, whose eyes were fixed on the
door through which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had passed, she said to
him in a low voice: "You are incorrigible.
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