conviction of the truth, which flashed upon their minds at the same
instant. They gave each other one look, for Madame du Gua had cleverly
separated them and they could only impart their thoughts by their eyes.
Such a situation demanded the utmost caution. They did not know whether
they and their men were masters of the situation, or whether they had
been drawn into a trap, or whether Mademoiselle de Verneuil was the
dupe or the accomplice of this inexplicable state of things. But an
unforeseen event precipitated a crisis before they had fully recognized
the gravity of their situation.

The new guest was one of those solid men who are square at the base and
square at the shoulders, with ruddy skins; men who lean backward when
they walk, seeming to displace much atmosphere about them, and who
appear to think that more than one glance of the eye is needful to take
them in. Notwithstanding his rank, he had taken life as a joke from
which he was to get as much amusement as possible; and yet, although he
knelt at his own shrine only, he was kind, polite, and witty, after the
fashion of those noblemen who, having finished their training at court,
return to live on their estates, and never suspect that they have, at
the end of twenty years, grown rusty. Men of this type fail in tact with
imperturbable coolness, talk folly wittily, distrust good with extreme
shrewdness, and take incredible pains to fall into traps.

When, by a play of his knife and fork which proclaimed him a good
feeder, he had made up for lost time, he began to look round on the
company. His astonishment was great when he observed the two Republican
officers, and he questioned Madame du Gua with a look, while she, for
all answer, showed him Mademoiselle de Verneuil in the same way. When he
saw the siren whose demeanor had silenced the suspicions Madame du Gua
had excited among the guests, the face of the stout stranger broke into
one of those insolent, ironical smiles which contain a whole history of
scandal. He leaned to his next neighbor and whispered a few words, which
went from ear to ear and lip to lip, passing Marie and the two officers,
until they reached the heart of one whom they struck to death. The
leaders of the Vendeans and the Chouans assembled round that table
looked at the Marquis de Montauran with cruel curiosity. The eyes
of Madame du Gua, flashing with joy, turned from the marquis to
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who was speechless with surpr