“Mademoiselle de Barras!” he said, at last, in a tone of cold surprise.

“Yes, poor Mademoiselle de Barras,” replied the sweet voice of the young Frenchwoman, while her lips hardly moved as the melancholy tones passed them.

“Well, mademoiselle, what do you desire?” he asked, in the same cold accents, and averting his eyes.

“Ah, monsieur, do you ask?—­can you pretend to be ignorant?  Have you not sent me a message, a cruel, cruel message?”

She spoke so low and gently, that a person at the other end of the room could hardly have heard her words.

“Yes, Mademoiselle de Barras, I did send you a message,” he replied, doggedly.  “A cruel one you will scarcely presume to call it, when you reflect upon your own conduct, and the circumstances which have provoked the measures I have taken.”

“What have I done, Monsieur?—­what circumstances do you mean?” asked she, plaintively.

“What have you done!  A pretty question, truly.  Ha, ha!” he repeated, bitterly, and then added, with suppressed vehemence, “ask your own heart, mademoiselle.”

“I have asked, I do ask, and my heart answers—­nothing,” she replied, raising her fine melancholy eyes for a moment to his face.

“It lies, then,” he retorted, with a fierce scoff.

“Monsieur, before heaven I swear, you wrong me foully,” she said, earnestly, clasping her hands together.

“Did ever woman say she was accused rightly, mademoiselle?” retorted Marston, with a sneer.

“I don’t know—­I don’t care.  I only know that I am innocent,” continued she, piteously.  “I call heaven to witness you have wronged me.”

“Wronged you!—­why, after all, with what have I charged you?” said he, scoffingly; “but let that pass.  I have formed my opinions, arrived at my conclusions.  If I have not named them broadly, you at least seem to understand their nature thoroughly.  I know the world.  I am no novice in the arts of women, mademoiselle.  Reserve your vows and attestations for schoolboys and simpletons; they are sadly thrown away upon me.”

Marston paced to and fro, with his hands thrust into his pockets, as he thus spoke.

“Then you don’t, or rather you will not believe what I tell you?” said she, imploringly.  “No,” he answered, drily and slowly, as he passed her.  “I don’t, and I won’t (as you say) believe one word of it; so, pray spare yourself further trouble about the matter.”

She raised her head, and darted after him a glance that seemed absolutely to blaze, and at the same time smote her little hand fast clenched upon her breast.  The words, however, that trembled on her pale lips were not uttered; her eyes were again cast down, and her fingers played with the little locket that hung round her neck.

“I must make, before I go,” she said, with a deep sigh and a melancholy voice, “one confidence—­one last confidence:  judge me by it.  You cannot choose but believe me now:  it is a secret, and it must even here be whispered, whispered, whispered!”