The attitude of the old man, who raised his head on high while his breast swelled, breathed in every one of his sharp and threatening gestures an intense thirst of vengeance.  He no longer measured his words carefully; and they overflowed from his lips as they came boiling up under the pressure of his rage.

“Anthony!” said the old lady more than once,—­“Anthony, brother!  I beseech you!”

But this friendly voice, ordinarily all-powerful, was not even heard by him now.  He went on,—­

“And now, madam, must I still explain to you the simple and yet formidable plan by which Sarah Brandon has succeeded in obtaining by one effort the immense fortune of the Ville-Handry family?  From the first day, she has seen that you were standing between her and those millions; therefore she attacked you first of all.  A brave and honest man, M. Daniel Champcey, loved you; he would have protected you; therefore she got him out of the way.  The world might have become interested in you, might have taken your side; she beguiled your father, in his blind passion, to calumniate you, to ruin your reputation, and to expose you to the contempt of the world.  Still you might have wished to secure a protector, you might have found one.  She placed by your side her wretched tool, her spy, a forger, a criminal whom she knew to be able of doing things from which even an accomplished galley-slave would have shrunk with disgust and horror:  I mean Maxime de Brevan.”

The very excess, of eruption had restored a part of her energy to Henrietta.  She said, therefore,—­

“Alas, sir! have I not told you, on, the contrary, that Daniel himself had confided me to the care of M. de Brevan?  Have I not told you”—­

The old dealer smiled almost contemptuously, and then continued,—­

“What does that prove?  Nothing but the skill of M. de Brevan in carrying out Sarah Brandon’s orders.  In order to get the more completely the mastery over you, he began by obtaining the mastery over M. Champcey.  How he succeeded in doing this, I do not know.  But we shall know it when we want to know it; for we are going to find out every thing.  Thus Sarah was, through M. de Brevan, kept informed of all your thoughts, of all your hopes, of every word you wrote to M. Champcey, and of all he said in reply; for you need not doubt he did answer, and they suppressed the letters, just as they, very probably, intercepted all of your letters which you did not yourself carry to the post-office.  Still, as long as you were living under your father’s roof, Sarah could do nothing against your life.  She resolved, therefore, to force you to flee; and those mean persecutions of M. Elgin served their purpose.  You thought, and perhaps, they think, that bandit really wanted your hand.  Undeceive yourself.  Your enemies knew your character too well to hope that you would ever break your word, and become faithless to M. Champcey.  But they were bent upon handing you over to M. de Brevan.  And thus, poor child! you were handed over to him.  Maxime had as little idea of marrying you as Sir Thomas; he was quite prepared, when he dared to approach you with open arms, to be rejected with disgust.  But he had received orders to add the horror of his persecutions to the horror of your isolation and your destitution.