"Against bribing a criminal--a jail-bird like Leroux, to betray his master," replied Fernande calmly.
Madame laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
"That," she said, "my dear, is childish. On Leroux' help rests the whole edifice of our plans and our entire hope of success."
"I know that well enough," rejoined Fernande. "I know that you are not like to heed anything I say. I only spoke because you forced me. Think you," she added more vehemently, "that if I had thought for a moment that you, or father, or M. de Puisaye, would have listened to me, I would not have dragged myself at your feet and kissed the ground and licked the dust and never risen until you heard, until you gave up all thought of joining issue with a miserable traitor, a criminal like Leroux. It is because I knew that my voice would count as less than nothing with you all that I remained silent."
"You speak with strange excitement, child...."
"I speak as I feel," she retorted hotly. "I speak because something in me tells me that some awful disaster will come to us and to our cause through trafficking with Leroux and his kind. Of this I am as convinced, _ma tante_, as I am of the fact that M. de Maurel already suspects our machinations, and on this," she concluded with marvellous forcefulness, "I would stake my life."
"Mad?" retorted the girl hotly, "mad because I implore you not to sully our cause by joining issue with a handful of felons; mad because I foresee an abyss of misery and of remorse for us all in this monstrous treachery which we have planned. Ah! if it only meant a ruse of war, a clever intrigue to catch an unwary foe! But what M. de Puisaye has planned may mean murder, _ma tante_--the murder of a brave man--and that man your son ...!"
"Fernande! In Heaven's name, what does this mean?"
The cry came from the door, which had suddenly been thrown open, and Fernande, almost beside herself with the vehemence of her emotion, turned and found herself face to face with Laurent, who was standing under the lintel, his cheeks pale, his breath coming and going in rapid gasps through his parted lips, his dark eyes fixed gloweringly upon her.
"Mother, will you explain?" continued the young man peremptorily, as he turned to Madame la Marquise and, closing the door behind him, strode into the room.