Is it true? Do you know who they are?"
"Yes," answered Lomaque; "but I have superior orders to keep the
information to myself just at present."
The eagerness with which Danville put his question, and the
disappointment he showed on getting no satisfactory answer to it,
were of a nature to satisfy the observant chief agent that his
superintendent was really as ignorant as he appeared to be on the
subject of the man and woman Dubois. That one mystery, at any
rate was still, for Danville, a mystery unrevealed.
"Louis Trudaine! Rose Danville!" shouted the crier, with another
rap of his bludgeon.
The two came forward, at the appeal, to the front railing of the
platform. The first sight of her judges, the first shock on
confronting the pitiless curiosity of the audience, seemed to
overwhelm Rose. She turned from deadly pale to crimson, then to
pale again, and hid her face on her brother's shoulder. How fast
she heard his heart throbbing! How the tears filled her eyes as
she felt that his fear was all for her!
"Now," said the president, writing down their names. "Denounced
by whom?"
Magloire and Picard stepped forward to the table. The first
answered--"By Citizen Superintendent Danville."
The reply made a great stir and sensation among both prisoners
and audience.
"Accused of what?" pursued the president.
"The male prisoner, of conspiracy against the Republic; the
female prisoner, of criminal knowledge of the same.
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