She shuddered at the loathsome touch, but her quietude never forsook her for a moment.
It was into the power of wretches such as this man, that she had wilfully delivered the man she loved.

This brutish creature's familiarity put the finishing touch to her own degradation, but it gave her the courage to carry through her purpose to the end.
"You had more than one lover, then ?" said Merlin, with a laugh which would have pleased the devil himself.

"And you wished to send one of them to the guillotine in order to make way for the other?
Was that it ?" "Was that it ?" he repeated, suddenly seizing one of her wrists, and giving it as savage twist, so that she almost screamed with the pain.
"Yes," she replied firmly.
"Do you know that you brought me here on a fool's errand ?" he asked viciously; "that the Citizen-Deputy Deroulede cannot be sent to the guillotine on mere suspicion, eh?
Did you know that, when you wrote out that denunciation ?" "No; I did not know." "You thought we could arrest him on mere suspicion ?" "Yes." "You knew he was Innocent ?" "I knew it." "Why did you burn your love letters ?" "I was afraid that they would be found, and would be brought under the notice of the Citizen-Deputy." "A splendid combination, _ma foi!_" said Merlin, with an oath, as he turned to the two other women, who sat pale and shrinking in a corner of the room, not understanding what was going on, not knowing what to think or what to believe.

They had known nothing of Deroulede's plans for the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the letter-case had contained, and yet they both vaguely felt that the beautiful girl, who stood up so calmly before the loathsome Terrorist, was not a wanton, as she tried to make out, but only misguided, mad perhaps--perhaps a martyr.
"Did you know anything of this ?" queried Merlin roughly from trembling Anne Mie.
"Nothing," she replied.
"No one knew anything of my private affairs or of my private correspondence," said Juliette coldly; "as you say, it was a splendid combination.

I had hoped that it would succeed.