“Before you give me your answer, Hugh Fraser,” said the calm-voiced woman, “I wish to tell you again what, in your mad jealousy, you would not believe. I swear to you that Pierre Troubetskoi’s letter, written to my dead sister, was written in ignorance of her marriage with you. The frightful scenes of the carnage of Paris had tossed us to and fro, and the careless destruction of the envelope, addressed to my sister under her maiden name, prevented me from proving her innocence as a wife. Pierre Troubetskoi had long known my father, who had been an attache in Russia. He was Valerie’s knightly suitor. And he fell into the estates which now burden me with wealth, while absent upon the Czar’s secret affairs. My gallant old father was sacrificed to the frenzy of the time; his soldier’s face betrayed him, his rosette of the Legion doomed him, Troubetskoi’s letter to our father demanding Valerie’s hand was returned to the writer, through the Russian Legation, a year later, after the reorganization of the Paris Post-office. I do not ask you to believe this, but by the God of Heaven, it is my warrant for forcing myself to the side of my dead sister’s child. She shall yet have every acre and every rouble that Pierre Troubetskoi would have given to this child whom you hide. My sister died with her empty arms stretched to Heaven, imploring God for her child. And now, what terms will you make with me. In the one case, an armed peace; in the other, ‘war to the knife!’” “What would you have?” he stubbornly muttered. “You seek my ruin.” “I do not!” solemnly answered Berthe Louison. “God has blasted your life in denying you the love of your own child. You rule her by fear. You, in your selfish passion, once reached out your strong hand and crushed this girl’s mother, a poor, fragile flower, in her girlhood. Valerie believed Pierre to be dead or false when she timidly crossed the threshold of the wedded home which you made a prison for her! You only care for this bubble Baronetcy and for your heaped-up hoards. The tribute of the shrieking ryot! Now, here are my terms: I will go down with you to Calcutta, and deliver over to you there the receipt for the deposit of jewels which holds back your coveted honor. You may do with them as you will! A visit to the Viceroy will at once clear the path. Tell any story you will of their recovery. An underling’s unfaithfulness or the loss of the paper. You may remove them and surrender them as you will. Perhaps a fanciful discovery of their hiding-place here, their surrender by Hindu thieves, frightened at last; any of these conventional lies will clear your official record of the olden stain. Long years ago I would have treated with you, but I wanted to find the child. You hid her away from me. I found you out by chance in your changed name and new official residence.”