"And Victor de Marmont was after it. Mr. Clyffurde may have known that. . . . Remember, my dear," continued Madame, "that these were my impressions last night. Maurice's account of the den of cutthroats has modified these entirely." Again Crystal was silent. The frown had darkened on her face: there was a line of bitter resentment round her lips--a look of contempt, of hate, of a desire to hurt, in her eyes. "Maurice," she said abruptly at last. "Yes?" "I did wound that thief, did I not?" "Yes. In the shoulder . . . it gave me a slight advantage . . ." he said with affected modesty. "I am glad. And you . . . you were able to punish him too, I hope." "Yes. I punished him." He was watching her very closely, for inwardly he had been wondering how she had taken his news. She was strangely agitated, so Maurice's troubled, jealous heart told him; her face was flushed, her eyes were wet and a tiny lace handkerchief which she twisted between her fingers was nothing but a damp rag. "Oh! I hate him! I hate him!" she murmured as with an impatient gesture she brushed the gathering tears from her eyes. "Father had been so kind to him--so were we all. How could he? how could he?" "His duty, I suppose," said St. Genis magnanimously. "His duty?" she retorted scornfully. "To the cause which he served." "Duty to a usurper, a brigand, the enemy of his country. Was he, then, paid to serve the Corsican?" "Probably." "His being in trade--buying gloves at Grenoble--was all a plant then?" "I am afraid so," said St. Genis, who much against his will now was sinking ever deeper and deeper in the quagmire of lying and cowardice into which he had allowed himself to drift. "And he was nothing better than a spy!" No one, not even Crystal herself, could have defined with what feelings she said this. Was it solely contempt? or did a strange mixture of regret and sorrow mingle with the scorn which she felt? Swiftly her thoughts had flown back to that Sunday evening--a very few days ago--when the course of her destiny was so suddenly changed once more, when her marriage with a man whom she could never love was broken off, when the possibilities once more rose upon the horizon of her life, of a renewed existence of poverty and exile in the wake of a dispossessed king. That same evening a man whom she had hardly noticed before--a man neither of her own nationality nor of her own caste--this same Englishman, Clyffurde, had entered into her life--not violently or aggressively, but just with a few words of intense sympathy and with a genuine offer of friendship; and she somehow, despite much kindness which encompassed her always, had felt cheered and warmed by his words, and a strange and sweet sense of security against hurt and sorrow had entered her heart as she listened to them.