"Tiens, Citizen," she said in a different tone, "she is not dead yet"; and the immense relief gave Dangeau’s anger rein. "Woman!" he said violently, "what has happened? Where is she? At once——" Rosalie twitched away her shoulder, shrinking back against the wall. This blaze of anger kept her sane for the moment. "She is in prison, at the Abbaye," she said. Under the excitement her brain cleared, and she was thinking now, debating how much she should tell him. "Since when?" "A month—six weeks—what do I know?" "How came she to be arrested?" "How should I know, Citizen?" "Did you betray her? You knew who she was. Take care and do not lie to me." "I lie, I—Citizen! But I was her best friend, and when that beast Hébert came hanging round——" "Hébert?" "She took his fancy, Heaven knows why, and you know her proud ways. Any other girl would have played with him a little, given a smile or two, and kept him off; but she, with her nose in the air, and her eyes looking past him, as if he was n’t fit for her to see,—why, she made him feel as if he were the mud under her feet, and what could any one expect? He got her clapped into the Abbaye, to repent at leisure." Dangeau was a man of clean lips, but now he called down damnation upon Hébert’s black soul with an earnestness that frightened Rosalie. "What more do you know? Tell me at once!" She turned uneasily from the look in his eyes. "She will be tried to-day." "You are sure?" "Thérèse told me, and she and Hébert are thick as thieves again." "What hour? Dieu! what hour? It is ten o’clock now." "Before noon, I think she said, but I can’t be sure of that." "You are lying?" "No, no, Citizen—I do not know—indeed I do not." He saw that she was speaking the truth, and turned from her with a despairing gesture. As he stumbled out of the shop he knocked over a great basket of potatoes, and Rosalie, with a sort of groan of relief, went down on her knees and began to gather them up. As the excitement of the scene she had been through subsided her eyes took that dull glaze again. Her movements became slower, and she stared oddly at the brown potatoes as she handled them. "One—two—three," she counted in a monotonous voice, dropping them into the basket. At each little thud she started slightly, then went on counting. "Four—five—six—seven—eight—" Suddenly she stared at them heavily. "There’s no blood," she muttered, "no blood." Half an hour later Thérèse found her with a phlegmatic smile upon her face and idle hands folded over something that lay beneath her coarse apron. "Come along then, Rosalie," she called out impatiently. "Have you forgotten the trial?—we’ve not too much time." "Ah!" said Rosalie, nodding slowly; "ah, the trial." Thérèse tapped impatiently with her foot. "Come then, for Heaven’s sake! or we shall not get places." "Places," said Rosalie suddenly; "what for?"