"Because she is in love with Paul?" interrupted Anne Mie vehemently. "No, no; she does not love him--at least--Oh! sometimes I don't know. Her eyes light up when he comes, and she is listless when he goes. She always spends a longer time over her toilet, when we expect him home to dinner," she added, with a touch of naïve femininity. "But--if it be love, then that love is strange and unwomanly; it is a love that will not be for his good ..."
"I don't know," said the girl simply. "Isn't it an instinct?"
"Not a very unerring one in this case, I fear."
"Because your own love for Paul Déroulède has blinded you--- Ah! you must pardon me, mademoiselle; you sought this conversation and not I, and I fear me I have wounded you. Yet I would wish you to know how deep is my sympathy with you, and how great my desire to render you a service if I could."
"I was about to ask a service of you, monsieur."
"You are Paul's friend--persuade him that that woman in his house is a standing danger to his life and liberty."
"Except on one subject--the woman he loves."
He had said the last words very gently but very firmly. He was deeply, tenderly sorry for the poor, deformed, fragile girl, doomed to be a witness of that most heartrending of human tragedies, the passing away of her own scarce-hoped-for happiness. But he felt that at this moment the kindest act would be one of complete truth. He knew that Paul Déroulède's heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too, like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and her strange, silent ways, but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that no sin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out the heart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, or even treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place in Déroulède's very soul, which no one else would ever fill.
"You think he loves her?" asked Anne Mie at last.
"Ah! I do not know. I would trust your instinct--a woman's--sooner than my own."
"She is false, I tell you, and is hatching treason against Paul."
"And watch carefully, earnestly, all the time. There! shall I pledge you my word that Déroulède shall come to no harm?"
"Pledge me your word that you'll part him from that woman."