At the Compiègne inn the fugitive Andrea crashes into her very room; Eugénie, cold as a Vestal, bids him 'kill yourself' before he is dragged away in disgrace.
Fleeing toward Brussels with Louise d'Armilly, Eugénie Danglars halts overnight at the Bell and Bottle tavern in Compiègne—only to have the hunted Andrea Cavalcanti fall down the chimney into their very room as he tries to escape the gendarmes. Recognizing 'Andrea, the murderer,' she meets his pleas for mercy with icy scorn: when he refuses to hide and the police close in, she urges him, 'in a tone which a Vestal in the amphitheatre would have used,' to 'kill yourself' rather than be taken. He mocks her in return—'was I not nearly your husband?'—and she covers her face in shame as he is manacled.
Forced next morning to pass through 'a throng of curious glances and whispering voices,' Eugénie shuts her eyes against the sneers, crying 'Oh, why is not the world a wilderness?', her rage like Nero's. The next day she and Louise reach the Hôtel de Flandre at Brussels, free at last of Paris but marked by the scandal that dogged even her flight.
A striking strong-featured young woman of seventeen with cropped raven hair, here again in feminine attire, her proud face burning with shame and rage.
The fugitive heiress who coldly bids the cornered Andrea die, then endures the crowd's sneers.