It was some nights later that Mlle de Rochambeau, copying serenely according to her wont, came across something which made her eyes flash and her cheeks burn. So far she had written on without paying much heed to the matter before her, her pen pursuing a mechanical task, whilst her thought merely followed its clear, external form, gracing it with fine script and due punctuation. At first, too, the strangeness of her situation had had its share in absorbing her mind, but now she was more at her ease, and began, as babies do, to take notice. Custom had set its tranquillising seal upon her occupation, and perhaps a waking interest in Dangeau set her wondering about his work. Certain it is that, having written as the heading of a chapter "Sins against Liberty," she fell to considering the nature of Liberty and wondering what might be these sins against it, which were treated of, as she began to perceive, in language theological in its fervour of denunciation. Dangeau had written the chapter a year ago, in a white heat of fury against certain facts which had come to his knowledge; and it breathed a very ardent hatred towards tyrants and their rule, towards a hereditary aristocracy and its oppression. Mlle de Rochambeau turned the leaf, and read—"a race unfit to live, since it produces men without honour and justice, and women devoid of virtue and pity." She dropped the sheet as if it burned, and Dangeau, looking up, found her eyes fixed on him with an expression of proud resentment, which stung him keenly. "What is it?" he asked quickly. She read the words aloud, with a slow scorn, which went home. "And Monsieur believes that?" she said, with her eyes still on his. Dangeau was vexed. He had forgotten the chapter. It must read like an insult. So far had love taken him, but he would not deny what he had written, and after all was it not well she should know the truth, she who had been snatched like some pure pearl from the rottenness and corruption of her order? "It is the truth," he said; "before Heaven it is the truth." "The truth—this?" she said, smiling. "Ah no, Monsieur, I think not." The smile pricked him, and his words broke out hotly. "You are young, Citoyenne, too young to have known and seen the shameless wickedness, the crushing tyranny, of this aristocracy of France. I tell you the country has bled at every pore that vampires might suck the blood, and fatten on it, they and their children. Do you claim honour for the man who does not shame to dishonour the hearths of the poor, or pity for the woman who will see children starving at her gate that she may buy herself another string of diamonds—hard and cold as her most unpitiful heart?" "Oh!" said Mademoiselle faintly.