M. Verduret observed that she still wore her shawl and bonnet.

She was standing in the middle of the room, talking with great animation.  Her look and gestures betrayed indignant scorn.  There was an expression of ill-disguised loathing upon her beautiful face.

Raoul was seated by the fire, stirring up the coals with a pair of tongs.  Every now and then, he would shrug his shoulders, like a man resigned to everything he heard, and had no answer, except, “I cannot help it.  I can do nothing for you.”

M. Verdure would willingly have given the diamond ring on his finger to be able to hear what was said; but the roaring wind completely drowned their voices.

“They are evidently quarrelling,” he thought; “but it is not a lovers’ quarrel.”

Madeleine continued talking; and it was by closely watching the face of Lagors, clearly revealed by the lamp on the mantel, that M. Verduret hoped to discover the meaning of the scene before him.

At one moment Lagors would start and tremble in spite of his apparent indifference; the next, he would strike at the fire with the tongs, as if giving vent to his rage at some reproach uttered by Madeleine.

Finally Madeleine changed her threats into entreaties, and, clasping her hands, almost fell at his knees.

He turned away his head, and refused to answer save in monosyllables.

Several times she turned to leave the room, but each time returned, as if asking a favor, and unable to make up her mind to leave the house till she had obtained it.

At last she seemed to have uttered something decisive; for Raoul quickly rose and opened a desk near the fireplace, from which he took a bundle of papers, and handed them to her.

“Well,” thought M. Verduret, “this looks bad.  Can it be a compromising correspondence which the fair one wants to secure?”

Madeleine took the papers, but was apparently still dissatisfied.  She again entreated him to give her something else.  Raoul refused; and then she threw the papers on the table.

The papers seemed to puzzle M. Verduret very much, as he gazed at them through the window.

“I am not blind,” he said, “and I certainly am not mistaken; those papers, red, green, and yellow, are pawnbroker’s tickets!”

Madeleine turned over the papers as if looking for some particular ones.  She selected three, which she put in her pocket, disdainfully pushing the others aside.

She was evidently preparing to take her departure, for she said a few words to Raoul, who took up the lamp as if to escort her downstairs.

There was nothing more for M. Verduret to see.  He carefully descended the ladder, muttering to himself.  “Pawnbroker’s tickets!  What infamous mystery lies at the bottom of all this?”

The first thing he did was to remove the ladder.

Raoul might take it into his head to look around the garden, when he came to the door with Madeleine, and if he did so the ladder could scarcely fail to attract his attention.