The Red Cockade by Stanley J. Weyman

"It is impossible! " I said slowly. "Froment! It is impossible!"

But even while I said it, I knew that I lied; and I turned to the window that Benoit might not see my face. Froment! The name alone, now that the hint was supplied, let in the light. Fellow-traveller, fellow-conspirator, in turn protected and protector, his face as I had seen it at the carriage door in the pass by Villeraugues, rose up before me, and I marvelled that I had not guessed the secret earlier. A bourgeois and ambitious, thrown into Mademoiselle's company, what could be more certain than that, sooner or later, he would lift his eyes to her? What more likely than that Madame St. Alais, impoverished and embittered, afloat on the whirlpool of agitation, would be willing to reward his daring even with her daughter's hand? Rich already, success would ennoble him; for the rest I knew how the man, strong where so many were weak, resolute where a hundred faltered, assured of his purpose and steadfast in pursuing it, where others knew none, must loom in a woman's eyes. And I gnashed my teeth.