“Isn’t it true that your name was connected with that of a man called Lalanne, and that he was killed in a duel on your account?”

“It’s true that Monsieur Lalanne made love to me; it’s also true that he was killed in a duel; but it’s not true that it was on my account.  The instance is an excellent illustration of the degree to which the true and the false are mixed in Parisian gossip—­perhaps in all gossip—­and a woman’s reputation blasted.  Unhappily for me, I felt myself young and strong enough to be indifferent to reputation.  I treated it with the neglect one often bestows upon one’s health—­not thinking that there would come a day of reckoning.”

“If there had been only one such case it might have been allowed to pass; but what do you say of De Cretteville? what of De Melcourt? what of Lord Wendover?”

“I have nothing to say but this:  that for such scandal I’ve a rule, from which I have no intention of departing even now:  I neither tell it, nor listen to it, nor contradict it.  If it pleases the Marquis de Bienville to repeat it, and you to give it credence, I can’t stoop to correct it, even in my own defence.”

“God knows I’m not delving into scandal, Diane.  If I bring up these miserable names, it’s only that you may have the opportunity to right yourself.”

“It’s an opportunity impossible for me to use.  If I were to attempt to unravel the strand of truth from the web of falsehood, it would end in your condemning me the more.  The canons of conduct in France are so different from those in America that what is permissible in one country is heinous in the other.  In the same way that your young girls shock our conceptions of propriety, our married women shock yours.  It would be useless to defend myself in your eyes, because I should be appealing to a standard to which I was never taught to conform.”

“I thought I had taken that into consideration.  I’m not entirely ignorant of the conditions under which you’ve lived, and I meant to have allowed for them.  But isn’t it true that you exceeded the very wide latitude recognized by public opinion, even in a place like Paris?”

“I didn’t take public opinion into account.  I was reckless of its injustice, as I was careless of its applause.  I see now, however, that indifference to either brings its punishment.”

“Those are abstract ideas, and I’m trying to deal with concrete facts.  Isn’t it true that George Eveleth was a rich man when you married him, and that your extravagance ruined him?”

“It helped to ruin him.  I plead guilty to that.  I had no knowledge of the value of money; but I don’t offer that as an excuse.”

“Isn’t it true that the Marquis de Bienville was your lover, and that you were thinking of deserting your husband to go with him?”

“It’s true that the Marquis de Bienville asked me to do so, and that I was rash enough to turn him into ridicule.  I shouldn’t have done it if I had known that there was a man in the world capable of taking such a revenge upon a woman as he took on me.”