But how came Blondel in the plot?
What was his part, what his object?
If he had been sincere in that attempt on Basterga's secrets, which Madame's delirious words had frustrated, was he sincere now?
Was his object now as then--the suppression of the devilish practices of which he had warned Claude, and in the punishment of which he had threatened to include the girl with her tempter?
Presumably it was, and he was still trying to reach the goal by other ways, using Louis as he had used Claude, or tried to use him.
And yet Claude doubted.

He began to suspect--for love is jealous--that Blondel had behind this a more secret, a more personal, a more selfish aim.

Had the young girl, still in her teens, caught the fancy of the man of sixty?
There was nothing unnatural in the idea; such things were, even in Geneva; and Louis was a go-between, not above the task.

In that case she who had showed a brave front to Basterga all these months, who had not blenched before the daily and hourly persecution to which she had been exposed in her home, was not likely to succumb to the senile advances of a man who might be her grandfather! If he did not hold her secret.

But if he did hold it?
If he did hold it, and the cruel power it gave?
If he held it, he who had only to lift his hand to consign her to duress on a charge so dark and dangerous that innocence itself was no protection against it?
So plausible that even her lover had for a short time held it true?
What then?
Claude, who had by this time reached the Tertasse gate and passed through it from the town side, paused on the ramparts and bared his head.