She looked round her and now perceived that someone was sitting at the table, the other side of the tallow-candles--a man, with head bent over a bundle of papers and shading his face against the light with his hand.
He rose as she approached, and the flickering flame of the candles played weirdly upon the slight, sable-clad figure, illumining the keen, ferret-like face, and throwing fitful gleams across the deep-set eyes and the narrow, cruel mouth.
It was Chauvelin.
Mechanically Marguerite took the chair which the soldier drew towards her, ordering her curtly to sit down.

She seemed to have but little power to move.

Though all her faculties had suddenly become preternaturally alert at sight of this man, whose very life now was spent in doing her the most grievous wrong that one human being can do to another, yet all these faculties were forcefully centred in the one mighty effort not to flinch before him, not to let him see for a moment that she was afraid.
She compelled her eyes to look at him fully and squarely, her lips not to tremble, her very heart to stop its wild, excited beating.

She felt his keen eyes fixed intently upon her, but more in curiosity than in hatred or satisfied vengeance.
When she had sat down he came round the table and moved towards her.
When he drew quite near, she instinctively recoiled.

It had been an almost imperceptible action on her part and certainly an involuntary one, for she did not wish to betray a single thought or emotion, until she knew what he wished to say.
But he had noted her movement--a sort of drawing up and stiffening of her whole person as he approached.