A few days later a piece of news reached her. She and Marguerite de Matigny sat embroidering the same long strip of silk. They had become close friends in the enforced daily intimacy of prison life, and the luxury of possessing a friend with whom she could revive the old, innocent, free talk of convent times was delightful in the extreme to the lonely girl, forced too soon into a self-reliance beyond her years. Mlle Marguerite looked up from the brilliant half-set stitch, and glanced warily round. "Tiens, Aline," she said, putting her small head on one side, "I heard something this morning, something that concerns you." Aline grew paler. That all news was bad news was one axiom which the events of the last few months had graved deeply on her heart. Marguerite saw the tremor that passed over her, and made haste to be reassuring. "No, no, ma belle, it is nothing bad. Stupid that I am! It is that these wretches outside have been fighting amongst themselves, and your M. Hébert has been sent to prison. I hope he likes it," and she took a little vicious stitch which knotted her yellow thread, and confused the symmetrical centre of a most gorgeous flower. "There, I have tangled my thread again, and grandmamma will scold me. I shall say it was the fault of your M. Hébert." "Please don’t call him _my_ M. Hébert," said Aline proudly. Marguerite laid down her needle. "Aline, why did he denounce you?" "Ah, Marguerite, don’t talk of him. You don’t know what a wretch—" and she broke off shuddering. "No, but I should like to know. I can see you could tell tales—oh, but most exciting ones! Why did he do it? He must have had some reason; or did he just see you, and hate you, like love at first sight, only the other way round?" Mlle de Rochambeau assumed an air of prudence and reproof. "Fi donc, Mlle de Matigny, what would your grandmother say to such talk?" Marguerite made a little, wicked _moue_. "She would say—it was not convenable," she mimicked, and laid a coaxing hand on her friend’s knee. "But tell me then, Aline, tell me what I want to know—tell me all about it, all there is to tell. I shall tease and tease until you do," she declared. "Oh, Marguerite, it is too dreadful to laugh about." "If one never laughed, because of dreadful things, why, then, we should all forget how to do it nowadays," pouted Marguerite. "But, see then, already I cry—" and she lifted an infinitesimal scrap of cambric to her dancing eyes. Mlle de Rochambeau laughed, but she shook her head, and Marguerite gave her a little pinch. "Wicked one," she said; "but I shall find out all the same. All my life I have found out what I wanted to, yes, even secrets of grandmamma’s," and she nodded mischievously; but Aline turned back to the original subject of the conversation. "Are you sure he is in prison?" she asked anxiously.