The Gars can't have taken all, at least my mother
thinks not--"
"Your mother?" said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, interrupting him in a
tone of irony, and making no reply to his invitation.
"Does my age seem more improbable to you this evening, mademoiselle?"
said Madame du Gua. "Unfortunately I was married very young, and my
son was born when I was fifteen."
"Are you not mistaken, madame?--when you were thirty, perhaps."
Madame du Gua turned livid as she swallowed the sarcasm. She would
have liked to revenge herself on the spot, but was forced to smile,
for she was determined at any cost, even that of insult, to discover
the nature of the feelings that actuated the young girl; she therefore
pretended not to have understood her.
"The Chouans have never had a more cruel leader than the Gars, if we
are to believe the stories about him," she said, addressing herself
vaguely to both Francine and her mistress.
"Oh, as for cruel, I don't believe that," said Mademoiselle de
Verneuil; "he knows how to lie, but he seems rather credulous himself.
The leader of a party ought not to be the plaything of others."
"Do you know him?" asked the /emigre/, quietly.
"No," she replied, with a disdainful glance, "but I thought I did."
"Oh, mademoiselle, he's a /malin/, yes a /malin/," said Captain Merle,
shaking his head and giving with an expressive gesture the peculiar
meaning to the word which it had in those days but has since lost.
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