“Yes, it is you who have driven me to this—­you, whom I picked up when you were hard pressed for a crust of bread or a cup of sour wine.  What had you?  You had nothing—­nothing except a name which was a laughing-stock.  And what did I give you?  I gave you everything.  You know that I gave you everything.  Money, position, the entrance to the court.  You had them all from me.  And now you mock me!”

“Madame, I do not mock you.  I pity you from the bottom of my heart.”

“Pity?  Ha! ha!  A Mortemart is pitied by the widow Scarron!  Your pity may go where your gratitude is, and where your character is.  We shall be troubled with it no longer then.”

“Your words do not pain me.”

“I can believe that you are not sensitive.”

“Not when my conscience is at ease.”

“Ah! it has not troubled you, then?”

“Not upon this point, madame.”

“My God!  How terrible must those other points have been!”

“I have never had an evil thought towards you.”

“None towards me?  Oh, woman, woman!”

“What have I done, then?  The king came to my room to see the children taught.  He stayed.  He talked.  He asked my opinion on this and that.  Could I be silent? or could I say other than what I thought?”

“You turned him against me!”

“I should be proud indeed if I thought that I had turned him to virtue.”

“The word comes well from your lips.”

“I would that I heard it upon yours.”

“And so, by your own confession, you stole the king’s love from me, most virtuous of widows!”

“I had all gratitude and kindly thought for you.  You have, as you have so often reminded me, been my benefactress.  It was not necessary for you to say it, for I had never for an instant forgotten it.  Yet if the king has asked me what I thought, I will not deny to you that I have said that sin is sin, and that he would be a worthier man if he shook off the guilty bonds which held him.”

“Or exchanged them for others.”

“For those of duty.”

“Pah!  Your hypocrisy sickens me!  If you pretend to be a nun, why are you not where the nuns are?  You would have the best of two worlds—­ would you not?—­have all that the court can give, and yet ape the manners of the cloister.  But you need not do it with me!  I know you as your inmost heart knows you.  I was honest, and what I did, I did before the world.  You, behind your priests and your directors and your prie-dieus and your missals—­do you think that you deceive me, as you deceive others?”

Her antagonist’s gray eyes sparkled for the first time, and she took a quick step forward, with one white hand half lifted in rebuke.