"He interrupted her. 'To my knowledge no letters were intercepted; I had no suspicion of such a proceeding.'
"I do not say you had; I am making you acquainted with a fact. Hurt and vexed at receiving no reply to my letters, and being able to account for it only on the supposition that they had not come into his possession, I wrote one and gave it to Denise to post for me. That also, as I learnt after my mother's death, was intercepted, and never reached its destination. In the meantime, false information was given to me respecting M. Gabriel; shameful stories were related to me, in which he was the principal actor. He was vile and false, as I was led to believe; and you were held up to me as his very opposite, as noble, chivalrous, generous, disinterested----'
"'In all of which you will bear in mind, I was in no way inculpated, being entirely ignorant of what was going on under my roof.'
"'And I was, besides, led to believe by my mother that you had laid us under such obligations that there was but one repayment of them----'
"'Plainly speaking,' he interposed, 'that, in any kindness I had shown, I was deliberately making a purchase, that in every friendly office I performed, I had but one cowardly end in view. It needed this to complete the story.'
"'My heart was almost broken,' she continued, making no comment on his bitter interruption; 'but it was pointed out to me that I could at least answer the call of gratitude and duty. Doubly did my mother deceive me.'
"'And doubly,' said my master, 'did you deceive me.'
"'When, some time after our unhappy marriage, you introduced M. Gabriel into this house, I was both angry and humiliated. It looked as though you intended to insult me, and Denise was a witness of my agitation. It was not unnatural that, remaining here, your guest--bidden by you, not by me--for so long a time explanations should pass between M. Gabriel and myself. Then it was that my eyes were really opened to the pit into which I had been deliberately dragged.'
"'Not by me were you dragged into this pit.'
"'Let it pass for a moment,' she said, in a disdainful voice. 'When my eyes were opened to the truth, how was I to know that you had not shared in the plot against me? How am I to know it now?'