Neither of the men sat down: they stood facing one another now across the table whereon stood a couple of tallow candles which threw fitful, yellow lights on their faces--so different, so strangely contrasted--young and well-looking both--both strongly moved by passion, yet one entirely self-controlled, while in the other's eyes that passion glowed fierce and resentful.
And Clyffurde began after a slight pause: "At the time that you fell upon me with such ill-considered vigour, M. de St. Genis," he said, "did you know that but for my abominable outrage upon the persons whom you honour, the money which they would gladly have guarded with their life would have fallen into the hands of Bonaparte's agents?"
"In theirs or yours, what matters?" retorted St. Genis savagely, "since His Majesty is deprived of it now."
"That is where you are mistaken, my young friend," said the other quietly. "His Majesty is more sure of getting the money now than he was when M. le Comte de Cambray with his family and yourself started on that quixotic if ill-considered errand this morning."
"I don't understand you," he said curtly.
"Isn't it simple enough? You and your friends credited me with friendship for de Marmont: he is hot-headed and impetuous, and words rush out of his mouth that he should keep to himself. I knew from himself that Bonaparte had charged him to recover the twenty-five millions which M. le préfet Fourier had placed in the Comte de Cambray's charge."
"Why did you not warn the Comte then?" queried St. Genis, who, still mistrustful, glowered at his antagonist.
"Would he have listened to me, think you?" asked the other with a quiet smile. "Remember, he had turned me out of his house two nights before, without a word of courtesy or regret--on the mere suspicion of my intercourse with de Marmont. Were you too full with your own rage to notice what happened then? Mlle. Crystal drew away her skirts from me as if I were a leper. What credence would they have given my words? Would the Comte even have admitted me into his presence?"
"And so . . . you planned this robbery . . . you . . ." stammered St. Genis, whose astonishment and puzzlement were rendering him as speechless as his rage had done. "I'll not believe it," he continued more firmly; "you are fooling me, now that I have found you out."