Of Madame la Marquise's more serious intentions with regard to herself and Ronnay de Maurel she knew nothing as yet. Had she known of them, she would have fought against them with her whole might. She had far too much ardent hatred for the man to think of him as anything but a mere tool for the success of her own cause--a tool to be speedily cast aside once it had served its purpose.
That her coquetry with the man was not only capricious and thoughtless, but also wantonly cruel, she did not realize for a moment. Just now she felt more amused than thrilled by the thought that she had aroused tender feelings in the heart of a man of de Maurel's calibre; and she was only eighteen, and had no one to guide her in the somewhat tortuous path in which she had embarked. Madame la Marquise encouraged her openly. Her father was indulgently detached, and Laurent somewhat ridiculously jealous, whilst all the while she never brought herself to believe that de Maurel had it in him to love--sincerely, tenderly, unendingly. To her he was--he still remained--the enemy and the traitor; the man who perhaps had had no actual hand in the atrocities and the murders of the Revolution, but who had, nevertheless, countenanced them by openly professing democratic principles. Such a man was, therefore, fair prey for any loyal subject of His Majesty the King who had it in her power to make him suffer--as those of his kind had made the innocent suffer--and to make him weep tears of longing or of shame, that those very principles which he professed had shut him out for ever from the heart of his kindred, from their family circle, from home life and from happiness.
Yet, hating the man as she did, detesting all that he loved and despising all that he worshipped, Fernande--such are the contradictions of a woman's heart--manoeuvred day after day, at great risk to her own comfort and to her reputation, for the chance of meeting that same man alone and on the self-same spot where in his deep and ardent eyes she had already more than once read the secret of a passion which he himself had not yet probed to its depths.
Fernande was not at all surprised when she saw de Maurel sitting beside the silent pool--obviously waiting for her.