he ladies of Bellecour.

CHAPTER XIII. THE ROAD TO LIEGE

"Of what are you thinking, little fool?" asked the Marquise peevishly,
her fat face puckered into a hundred wrinkles of ill-humour.

"Of nothing in particular, Madame," the girl answered patiently.

The Marquise sniffed contemptuously, and glanced through the window of
the coach upon the dreary, rain sodden landscape.

"Do you call the sometime secretary Citizen-cutthroat La Boulaye,
nothing in particular?" she asked. "Ma foi! I wonder that you do not die
of self-contempt after what passed between you at Boisvert."

"Madame, I was not thinking of him," said Suzanne.

"More shame to you, then," was the sour retort, for the Marquise was
bent upon disagreeing with her. "Have you a conscience, Suzanne, that
you could have played such a Delilah part and never give a thought to
the man you have tricked?"

"You will make me regret that I told you of it," said the girl quietly.

"You are ready enough to regret anything but the act itself. Perhaps
you'll be regretting that you did not take a berline at Soignies, as you
promised the citizen-scoundrel that you would, and set out to join him?"

"It is hardly generous to taunt me so, Madame, I do very bitterly regret
what has taken place. But you might do me the justice to remember that
what I did I did as much for others as for myself. As much, indeed, for
you as for myself."

"For me?" echoed the Marquise shrilly. "Tiens, that is droll now! For
me? Was it for me that you made love to the citizen-blackguard? Are you
so dead to shame that you dare remind me of it?"

Mademoiselle sighed, and seemed to shrink back into the shadows of the
carriage. Her face was very pale, and her eyes looked sorely troubled.

"It is something that to my dying day I shall regret," she murmured. "It
was vile, it was unworthy! Yet if I had not used the only weapon to my
hand--" She ceased, the Marquise caught the sound of a sob.

"What are you weeping for, little fool?" she cried.

"As much as anything for what he must think of me when he realises how
shamefully I have used him."

"And does it matter what the canaille thinks? Shall it matter what the
citizen-assassin thinks?"

"A little, Madame," she sighed. "He will despise me as I deserve. I
almost wish that I could undo it, and go back to that little room at
Boisvert the prisoner of that fearful man, Tardivet, or else that--"
Again she paused, and the Marquise turned t