“Come, I see you are like all men, if they pledge their word to another man, who is a match for them, they consider it a point of honor to keep it, but if it is a woman, then they do not keep it, and boast of it!”

Daniel was furious; but she pretended not to see it, and said more coldly,—­

“I—­I have a better memory than you, sir; and I mean to prove it to you.  I know what has happened at Count Ville-Handry’s house; he has told me all.  You have allowed yourself to be carried away so far as to threaten him, to raise your hand against him.”

“He was going to strike his daughter, and I held his arm.”

“No, sir! my dear count is incapable of such violence; and yet his own daughter had dared to taunt him with his weakness, pretending that he had been induced by me to establish a new industrial company.”

Daniel said nothing.

“And you,” continued Miss Brandon,—­“you allowed Miss Henrietta to say all these offensive and absurd things.  I should induce the count to engage in an enterprise where money might be lost!  Why?  What interest could I have?”

Her voice began to tremble; and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

“Interest!” she went on to say, “money!  The world can think of no other motive nowadays.  Money!  I have enough of it.  If I marry the count, you know why I do it,—­you!  And you also know that it depended, and perhaps, at this moment, still depends upon one single man, whether I shall break off that match this very day, now.”

As she said this, she looked at him in a manner which would have caused a statue to tremble on its marble pedestal.

But he, with his heart full of hatred, remained icy, enjoying the revenge which was thus presented to him.

“I will believe whatever you wish to say,” he answered in a mocking tone, “if you will answer me a single question.”

“Ask, sir.”

“The other night, when I had left you, where did you go in your carriage?”

He expected to see her confused, turning pale, stammer.  Not at all.

“What, you know that?” she said, with an accent of admirable candor.  “Ah!  I committed an act of almost as great imprudence as I now do.  If some fool should see me leave your rooms?”

“Pardon me, Miss Brandon, that is no answer to my question.  Where did you go?”

And as she kept silent, surprised by Daniel’s firmness, he said sneeringly,—­

“Then you confess that it would be madness to believe you?  Let us break off here, and pray to God that I may be able to forget all the wrong you have done me.”

Miss Brandon’s beautiful eyes filled with tears of grief or of rage.  She folded her hands, and said in a suppliant tone,—­

“I conjure you, M. Champcey, grant me only five minutes.  I must speak to you.  If you knew”—­

He could not turn her out; he bowed profoundly before her, and withdrew into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.  But he immediately applied his eye to the keyhole, and saw Miss Brandon, her features convulsed with rage, threaten him with her closed hand, and leave the room hastily.