"Still, I would not--I could not--believe. Our last parting was fresh in my mind, ay! in my heart; our last vows and last farewells, our projects for the future, our hopes of days of happiness to come--forgive me if I remind you of them--they are wrecked now! I say I could not believe. Yet, wherever I looked, wherever I made inquiries, there was but one answer. The English, Scotch, and Irish gentlemen who frequented my father's house all gave the same answer, though none spake the words I feared. Some, I observed, regarded me with glances that were full of pity--for which I hated them--others preserved a silence that was worse tenfold than speech, some smiled in their sleeves. And Larpent was ever there--always, always, always. And one day he came to where I was sitting and said to me, 'Kitty, if you will indeed know the truth, there is a witness below who can give it to you. The _curé_ of Moret has come to Paris with a petition to the king against the exactions of the Seigneur. Kitty, he it was who made Bertie Elphinston and Madeleine Baufremont man and wife." "'So be it,' I replied. 'Yet, remember their marriage makes ours no nearer.' 'It will come,' he replied. 'I can not believe that my reward will never come.' Whereon he left the room and came back with the _curé_. Alas! he told so plain a tale, describing you with such precision and Madeleine Baufremont also, that there was, indeed, no room left for doubt. Yet still I could scarce believe; for even though you had not loved me, even though your burning words, your whispers of love had all been false, why, why, I asked again and again, should you have stooped to such duplicity? If you had tired of me, if that other had turned your heart from me to her, one word would have been enough; I must have let you go when you no longer desired to stay by my side. Mr. Elphinston, I wrote to you at Rome, to the address you had given me and to the English College there; I wrote to Father Sholto--alas! I so much forgot my pride, that I wrote to Douglas, who had then joined the squadron commanded by Monsieur de Roquefeuille for the invasion of England. I could not part from you yet"--these words were scored out by the writer, and, in their place, the sentence began--"I could not yet believe in your deceit, in your cold, cruel betrayal of a woman who had trusted in you as in a god; it seemed all too base and heartless. Yet neither from you nor the Sholtos came one line in answer to my prayer." Elphinston groaned bitterly as he read the words. He knew now how easily the trap had been laid.