And St. Genis--remembering Laffray and Grenoble, remembering what was going on in Lyons at this moment, the silent grumblings of the troops, the defaced white cockades, the cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" which he himself had heard as he rode through the town--St. Genis, remembering all this, could only shake his head and shrug his shoulders in miserable doubt.
When he had gone at last, Crystal's thoughts veered back once more to Clyffurde and to his treachery.
"What abominable deceit, _ma tante_!" she cried, and quite against her will tears of wrath and of disappointment rose to her eyes. "What villainy! what odious, execrable treachery!"
Madame shrugged her shoulders and took up her knitting.
"These days, my dear," she said with unwonted placidity, "the world is so full of treachery that men and women absorb it by every pore."
"But I shall not leave it at that," rejoined Crystal resolutely. "I'll find a means of punishing that vile traitor . . . I'll make him feel the hatred which he has so richly deserved--I shall not rest till I have made him suffer as he makes me suffer now. . . ."
"My dear--my dear--" protested Mme. la Duchesse, not a little shocked at the girl's vehemence.
Indeed, Crystal's otherwise sweet, gentle, yielding personality seemed completely transformed: for the moment she was just a sensitive woman who has been hit and hurt, and whose desire for retaliation is keener, more relentless than that of a man. All the soft look in her blue eyes had gone--they looked dark and hard--her fair curls were matted against her damp forehead; indeed, Madame thought that for the moment all Crystal's beauty had gone--the sweet, submissive beauty of the girl, the grace of movement, the shy, appealing gentleness of her ways. She now looked all determination, resentment, and, above all, revenge.
"The dear child," sighed the Duchesse over her knitting, "it is the English blood in her. Those people never know how to accept the inevitable: they are always wanting to fight someone for something and never know when they are beaten."
And the triumphal march from the gulf of Jouan continued uninterrupted to Paris.
After Laffray and Grenoble, Lyons, where the silk-weavers of La Guillotière assembled in their thousands to demolish the barricades which had been built up on their bridge against the arrival of the Emperor, and watched his entry into their city waving kerchiefs and hats in his honour, and tricolour flags and cockades fished out of cupboards, where they had lain hidden but not forgotten for one whole year.