"Yes, treachery," she answered, speaking in a lower tone, but more rapidly and passionately. "I know that Sophie, my maid, is bribed; I know that old Christian, who skulks about, day and night, watches me like a prisoner. I am not at all sure that old Pahlen, who shows some devotion to me, would not sell me for a handful of _thalers_. Yes, I am betrayed, betrayed on all sides. Whether by you--no; I will trust your honest blue eyes, although I had really good reason for suspecting you." I was half distracted to hear Constance speaking thus; and I implored her, I adjured her, to tell me what horrible delusion had deceived her, for that it was a delusion I was ready to prove. She should, she must tell me all. "Well then," she said, "is it delusion or truth that on the very first evening of your stay here, by order of my father, who brought you here for that purpose, you kept watch under my window, when afterwards you pretended to me that it was my music that had attracted you?" I started at these last words, which were accompanied with a dark suspicious look. That dark figure then had really been stealing to a rendezvous; and he had been there since, else how could she know what had happened? "You need make no further confession," said Constance, bitterly. "You have not yet sufficiently learned your lesson of dissimulation. And I, good-natured fool, believed that you were my faithful George." I was near weeping with grief and indignation. "For heaven's sake," I cried, "do not condemn me without a hearing. I went into the park without any special intention; without an idea that I should meet him--any one. If I had known that the man whom I saw from this point come out of the shrubbery yonder, came with your permission, I should never have intercepted him, but would have let him go unmolested where, as it seems, he was expected." "Who says that he came by my permission, and that he was expected?" she asked. "Yourself," I promptly answered. "The fact that you are informed of what none but he and I could know."