Jeannin, who was as fat as a stage financier, paused here to gasp; for the utterance of this string of banalities, this rigmarole of commonplaces, had left him breathless.  He was very much dissatisfied with his performance; and ready to curse his barren imagination.  He longed to hit upon swelling phrases and natural and touching gestures, but in vain.  He could only look at Mademoiselle de Guerchi with a miserable, heart-broken air.  She remained quietly seated, with the same expression of incredulity on her features.

So there was nothing for it but to go on once more.

“But this one assurance that I ask you will not give.  So what I have—­been told is true:  you have given your love to him.”

She could not check a startled movement.

“You see it is only when I speak of him that I can overcome in you the insensibility which is killing me.  My suspicions were true after all:  you deceived me for his sake.  Oh! the instinctive feeling of jealousy was right which forced me to quarrel with that man, to reject the perfidious friendship which he tried to force upon me.  He has returned to town, and we shall meet!  But why do I say ‘returned’?  Perhaps he only pretended to go away, and safe in this retreat has flouted with impunity, my despair and braved my vengeance!”

Up to this the lady had played a waiting game, but now she grew quite confused, trying to discover the thread of the treasurer’s thoughts.  To whom did he refer?  The Duc de Vitry?  That had been her first impression.  But the duke had only been acquainted with her for a few months—­since she had—­left Court.  He could not therefore have excited the jealousy of her whilom lover; and if it were not he, to whom did the words about rejecting “perfidious friendship,” and “returned to town,” and so on, apply?  Jeannin divined her embarrassment, and was not a little proud of the tactics which would, he was almost sure; force her to expose herself.  For there are certain women who can be thrown into cruel perplexity by speaking to them of their love-passages without affixing a proper name label to each.  They are placed as it were on the edge of an abyss, and forced to feel their way in darkness.  To say “You have loved” almost obliges them to ask “Whom?”

Nevertheless, this was not the word uttered by Mademoiselle de Guerchi while she ran through in her head a list of possibilities.  Her answer was—­

“Your language astonishes me; I don’t understand what you mean.”

The ice was broken, and the treasurer made a plunge.  Seizing one of Angelique’s hands, he asked—­

“Have you never seen Commander de Jars since then?”

“Commander de Jars!” exclaimed Angelique.

“Can you swear to me, Angelique, that you love him not?”

“Mon Dieu!  What put it into your head that I ever cared for him?  It’s over four months since I saw him last, and I hadn’t an idea whether he was alive or dead.  So he has been out of town?  That’s the first I heard of it.”