"Will he understand me?" She quivered. Then
she turned and went rapidly towards Fougeres, as though she feared the
marquis might follow her into the town, where certain death awaited
him.
"Francine, what did he say to you?" she asked, when the faithful girl
rejoined her.
"Ah! Marie, how I pitied him. You great ladies stab a man with your
tongues."
"How did he seem when he came up to you?"
"As if he saw me not at all! Oh, Marie, he loves you!"
"Yes, he loves me, or he does not love me--there is heaven or hell for
me in that," she answered. "Between the two extremes there is no spot
where I can set my foot."
After thus carrying out her resolution, Marie gave way to grief, and
her face, beautified till then by these conflicting sentiments,
changed for the worse so rapidly that in a single day, during which
she floated incessantly between hope and despair, she lost the glow of
beauty, and the freshness which has its source in the absence of
passion or the ardor of joy. Anxious to ascertain the result of her
mad enterprise, Hulot and Corentin came to see her soon after her
return. She received them smiling.
"Well," she said to the commandant, whose care-worn face had a
questioning expression, "the fox is coming within range of your guns;
you will soon have a glorious triumph over him."
"What happened?" asked Corentin, carelessly, giving Mademoiselle de
Verneuil one of those oblique glances with which diplomatists of his
class spy on thought.
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