"She was fumbling at her dress, loosening the top buttons close under her chin; then she ripped it clear, exposing her neck and back.
"'This is what was done to me when I was a child!'
"I leaned forward to see the closer. The poor child was one mass of hideous tattoo from her throat to her stays!
"'Now you know the whole story,' she sobbed, her eyes streaming tears; 'my heart is broken but I am satisfied. I could have stood anything but his loathing.'
"With this she fastened her dress and walked slowly out of the room, her head down, her whole figure one of abject misery."
Madame leaned forward, picked up her goblet of water, and remarking that walking in the wind always made her thirsty, drained its contents. Then she turned her head to hide her tears.
"A most extraordinary story, madame. Did the young fellow ever speak of the theft?" asked Herbert, the first of her listeners to speak.
"No," she answered slowly, in the effort to regain her composure, "he loved her too much to hear anything against her. He knew she had stolen it, for he had heard it from her own lips."
"And you never tried to clear her character?"
"How could I? It was her secret, not mine. To divulge it would have led to her other and more terrible secret, and that I was pledged to keep. She is dead, poor girl, or I would not have told you now."
"And what did you do, may I ask?" inquired Brierley.
"Nothing, except tell fibs. After she had gone the following morning I excused her to him, of course, on every ground that I could think of. I argued that she had a peculiar nature; that owing to her captivity she had perhaps lost that fine sense of what was her own and what was another's; that she had many splendid qualities; that she had only yielded to an impulse, just as a Bedouin does who steals an Arab horse and who, on second thought, returns it. That I had forgiven her, and had told her so, and as proof of it had tried, without avail, to make her keep the topaz. Only my husband knew the truth. 'Let it stay as it is, my dear,' he said to me; 'that girl has more knowledge of human nature than I credited her with. Once that young lover of hers had learned the cruel truth he wouldn't have lived with her another hour.'"