"My God!" he cried.
"What is it, monsieur?" I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.
"Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the
moment, in the excitement of all these revelations. But--" He
stopped short.
"Well, monsieur?"
He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that
same compassionate glance, "You had better know," said he. "And
yet - it is a difficult thing to tell you. I understand now much
that I had not dreamt of. You - you have no suspicion of how you
came to be arrested?"
"For my alleged participation in the late rebellion?"
"Yes, yes. But who gave the information of your whereabouts? Who
told the Keeper of the Seals where you were to be found?"
"Oh, that?" I answered easily. "Why, I never doubted it. It was
the coxcomb Saint-Eustache. I whipped him--"
I stopped short. There was something in Marsac's black face,
something in his glance, that forced the unspoken truth upon my mind.
"Mother in heaven!" I cried. "Do you mean that it was Mademoiselle
de Lavedan?"
He bowed his head in silence. Did she hate me, then, so much as
that? Would nothing less than my death appease her, and had I
utterly crushed the love that for a little while she had borne me,
that she could bring herself to hand me over to the headsman?
God! What a stab was that! It turned me sick with grief - aye, and
with some rage not against her, oh, not against her; against the
fates that had brought such things to pass.
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