“You must forgive me my seeming thanklessness, Mademoiselle,” he pursued. “It was the company of that sans-culotte rascal that soured me. I had enough of him a month ago, when he brought me to Paris. It offended me to have him stand here again in the same room with me, and insolently refer to his pledged word as though he were a gentleman born.” “To whom do you refer?” quoth she. “Ma foi! How many of them are there? Why, to this fellow, La Boulaye?” “So it seemed, and yet I could not believe it of you. Do you not realise that your ingratitude approaches the base?” He vouchsafed her a long, cold stare of amazement. “Mordieu!” he ejaculated at last. “I am afraid that your reason has been affected by your troubles. You seem, Mademoiselle, to be unmindful of the station into which you have had the honour to be born.” “If your bearing is to be accepted as a sign that you remember it, I will pray God that I may, indeed, forget it--completely and for all time.” And then the door opened to admit the good Henriette, who came to announce that she had contrived a hasty meal, and that it was served and awaiting them. “Diable!” he laughed. “Those are the first words of true wit that I have heard these many days. I swear,” he added, with a pleasantness that was oddly at variance with his sullen humour of a moment back, “that I have not tasted human food these four weeks, and as for my appetite--it is capable of consuming the whole patrimony of St. Peter. Lead the way, my good Henriette. Come, Mademoiselle.” CHAPTER XXI. THE ARREST Facts proved how correct had been La Boulaye's anticipations of the course that Cecile would adopt, Within a half-hour of his having quitted the house of Billaud Varennes, she presented herself there, and demanded to see the Deputy. Upon being told that he was absent she determined to await his return. And so, for the matter of an hour, she remained in the room where the porter had offered her accommodation, fretting at the delay, and only restrained from repairing to some other member of the Convention by the expectation that the next moment would see Varennes arrive. Arrive he did at last, when her patience was all but exhausted, and excitedly she told her tale of what had taken place. Varennes listened gravely, and cross-questioned her in his unbelief--for it seemed, indeed, monstrous that a man of La Boulaye's position should ruin so promising a future as was his by an act for which Varennes could not so much as divine a motive. But her story hung together so faithfully, and was so far borne out by the fact that Varennes himself had indeed signed such a document as she described, that in the end the Deputy determined to take some steps to neutralise the harm that might have been done.