The Baroness Ely's words had been as clear to the two men as though she had named Miss Marsh, and Verdier's look revealed how he loved the young American, and what suffering it had caused him to know that he could no longer esteem her. This additional avowal of a hated sentiment was distasteful to the Archduke, and his voice became authoritative, almost brutal, as he went on:-- "Besides, madame, we are very busy. An experiment cannot be kept waiting, and you will oblige me very much if you will speak plainly and not in enigmas." "I will obey Your Highness," replied Madame de Carlsberg, "and I will be very plain. I learn from my friend, Miss Marsh--" "The conversation is useless if you have come to speak of that intriguing woman," said the Prince, brusquely. "Your Highness!" It was Verdier who spoke as he took a step forward. The insult the Archduke had cast at Florence had made him tremble to his innermost being. "Well," demanded his master, turning toward his assistant, "is it true that Madame Bonnacorsi arranges for meetings in a little house at Golfe Juan? Did we see them enter? Do we know by whom the house is engaged and the lover whom she goes there to meet? If you had a brother or a friend, would you let him marry a girl whom you knew to be in the secret of such an intrigue?" "She is not in the secret of any intrigue," interrupted Ely, with an indignation that she did not seek to dissimulate. "Madame Bonnacorsi has not a lover." She repeated: "No, Madame Bonnacorsi has no lover. Since you have authorized me, let me speak frankly, Your Highness. The 14th of this month, you understand me, at Genoa, I was present at her marriage with Monsieur de Corancez in the Chapel of the Fregoso Palace, and Miss Marsh was also there. Sight or wrong, they did not wish the ceremony to be made public. I suppose they had their motives. They have not these motives any longer, and here is the letter in which Andryana begs me to officially announce to Your Highness the news of her marriage. You see," she went on, addressing Verdier, "that Florence was never anything but the most honest, the most upright, and the purest of young girls. Was I not right when I said that she has been cruelly, unworthily calumniated?" The Archduke took Andryana's letter. He read it and then returned it to his wife without any comment. He looked her straight in the face with the keen, haughty regard that seems natural to princes, and whose imperious, inquisitorial scrutiny reads to the bottom of the soul. He saw she was telling the truth. He next looked at Verdier. And now the anger in his eyes changed into an expression of deep sadness. Without paying any more attention to Ely than if she were not there, he spoke to the young man with the familiarity that the difference in their ages and positions authorized, although it was a familiarity that the Prince did not usually take in speaking to his assistant before witnesses.