“How can you have forgotten?  Why did you run away after marrying him?  What were you doing in New York?  Who was the man who accompanied you to the Merrimac?” he shouted.

Through the chink of the door I saw the old man look up in mild protest at the disturbing sounds.  I clenched my fists, and the temptation to make an end of Leroux was almost too strong for my restraint.

But to Jacqueline the insult conveyed no meaning, and Leroux continued in more moderate tones.

“Come, madame, why do you not play fair with me?” he asked.  “Who is that man Hewlett, and why did he accompany you so far toward your chateau?  Before God, I know your husband and he have been plotting with Tom Carson against me, but why he should thus place himself in my power I cannot understand.”

“Ah, you have spoken of a Tom Carson many times,” said Jacqueline.  “Soon, monsieur, I shall begin to believe that such a person really exists.”

“Tell me where you met Hewlett.”

“I tell you for the last time, monsieur, that I do not remember.  But what I do remember I shall tell you.  After my father had turned M. Louis d’Epernay out of his home, whither he had come to beg money to pay his gambling debts, you brought him back.  You made my father take him in.  He wanted to marry me.  But I refused, because I had no love for him.  But you insisted I should marry him, because he had gained you the entrance to the seigniory and helped you to acquire your power over my father.  Oh, yes, monsieur, let us be frank with each other, as you have expressed the desire to be.”

“Go on,” growled Leroux, biting his lips.  “Perhaps I shall learn something.”

“Nothing that you do not already know, monsieur,” she flashed out with spirit.  “My father came here, long ago, a political fugitive, in danger of death.  You knew this, and you played upon his fears.  You brought your friends and encouraged him to gamble and waste his money in his old age, when his mind had become enfeebled.

“Yes, you played on the old gambling instinct which had laid dormant in him for forty years.  You made him think he was acting the grand seigneur, as his father had done in earlier days, in his other home at St. Boniface.

“You drained him of his last penny, and then you offered him ten thousand dollars to gamble with in Quebec, telling him of the delights of the city and promising him immunity,” the girl went on remorselessly.  “And for this he was to assign his property to Louis, thinking, of course, that he could soon make his fortune at the tables.  And Louis was to marry me, and in turn sell the seigniory to you.  And so I married Louis under threat of death to my father.

“Oh, yes, monsieur, the plan was simple and well devised.  And I knew nothing of it.  But Louis d’Epernay blurted it all out to me upon our wedding night.  I think the shame of knowing that I had been sold to him unhinged my mind, for I ran out into the snows.