Once before Daniel had been thus alone with her; and, as the sensations he then felt rose in his mind, he began to tremble violently.  Then, thinking of his purpose in coming here, and the treacherous part he was about to act, he felt a desire to escape.

It was she who broke the charm.  She began, saying,—­

“You know, I presume, the misfortunes that have befallen us.  Your betrothed, Henrietta?  Has the count told you?”

Daniel had taken a chair.  He replied,—­

“The count has said nothing about his daughter.”

“Well, then, my saddest presentiments have been fulfilled.  Unhappy girl!  I did what I could to keep her in the right way.  But she fell, step by step, and finally so low, that one day, when a ray of sense fell upon her mind, she went and killed herself.”

It was done.  Sarah had overcome the last hesitation which Daniel still felt.  Now he was in the right temper to meet cunning with cunning.  He answered in an admirably-feigned tone of indifference,—­

“Ah!”

Then, encouraged by the joyous surprise he read in Sarah’s face, he went on,—­

“This expedition has cost me dear.  Count Ville-Handry has just informed me that he has lost his whole fortune.  I am in the same category.”

“What!  You are”—­

“Ruined.  Yes; that is to say, I have been robbed,—­robbed of every cent I ever had.  On the eve of my departure, I intrusted a hundred thousand dollars, all I ever possessed, to M. de Brevan, with orders to hold it at Miss Henrietta’s disposal.  He found it easier to appropriate the whole to himself.  So, you see, I am reduced to my pittance of pay as a lieutenant.  That is not much.”

Sarah looked at Daniel with perfect amazement.  In any other man, this prodigious confidence in a friend would have appeared to her the extreme of human folly; in Daniel, she thought it was sublime.

“Is that the reason why they have arrested M. de Brevan?” she asked.

Daniel had not heard of his arrest.

“What!” he said.  “Maxime”—­

“Was arrested last night, and is kept in close confinement.”

However well prepared Daniel was by Papa Ravinet’s account, he could never have hoped to manage the conversation as well as chance did.  He replied,—­

“It cannot be for having robbed me.  M. de Brevan must have been arrested for having attempted to murder me.”

The lioness who has just been robbed of her whelps does not rise with greater fury in her eyes than Sarah did when she heard these words.

“What!” she cried aloud.  “He has dared touch you!”

“Not personally; oh, no!  But he hired for the base purpose a wretched felon, who was caught, and has confessed everything.  I see that the order to apprehend my friend Maxime must have reached here before me, although it left Saigon some time later than I did.”

Might not M. de Brevan be as cowardly as Crochard when he saw that all was lost?  This idea, one would think, would have made Sarah tremble.  But it never occurred to her.