This allusion to a forgotten episode of the saddest part of their past brought a wave of blood to Ely's cheeks. She saw again, as her implacable questioner had asked her, one of the Princes Pietrapertosa paying his court to her. He was one of the imaginary rivals that Olivier had detested the most. She replied-- "I know. I acted wrongly." "You admit it," went on Du Prat, "and you will also admit that the young man with whom you played so cruelly had the right to judge you as he did, to leave you as he did, because when near you he felt all his worst impulses rise to the surface, because you made him evil, cruel, through his suffering. Is that also the truth?--And is it not also true that your pride was wounded by his desertion and that you determined to be revenged?--Will you deny that, having encountered later the most intimate, the dearest friend of that man, the deepest and most complete affection that had ever entered his life, you conceived a horrible idea? Will you deny that you determined to make his friend love you with the hope, the certainty, that he would learn, sooner or later, and would suffer horribly from the knowledge that his former mistress had become the mistress of his best, his only friend? Do you deny it?" "No. It is true," she replied. This time her beautiful face became livid. Her pallor, her aching head bowed as though under the weight of the blows it received, the fixed look in her eyes, her half-open mouth gasping for breath, the humble character of her replies, which proved how sincere she was in her firm resolve to not offer any defence of her action, ought to have disarmed Olivier. But as he uttered the words "to the mistress of his friend" the image again rose before his eyes, the vision that had tortured him from the moment he had suspected the truth. He again saw Hautefeuille's face close to her lovely countenance, his eyes looking into hers, his lips pressed upon hers. Ely's avowal only increased the tangibility of the vision. It completed his madness. He had never thought he loved her so well, that he had such a desire for the woman he had treated so brutally. His passion took complete possession of him.