She glared at him, and muttered something uncomplimentary beneath her breath, but he continued, coolly: "Go on and tell us, please. We do not wish to detain your _estimable_ husband much longer from his amiable bride!" "Very well, then, since you will have it, here is Una's history in a nutshell: She is a child of shame." "You told me that once before; also, that she was your child, but I did not believe you," answered Carmontelle. She glared at him angrily, and said: "Well, part of it was untrue, but so much the worse for the girl. She might better be my child than the offspring of a slave with a taint of African blood in her veins!" "Woman!" Eliot had sprung at her fiercely and clutched her white shoulder in a grasp like steel. He shook her wildly in a tempest of rage. "Unsay that lie!" he hissed, fiercely, with blazing eyes. Madame turned, shrieking, to Carmontelle. "Make him take his hands off me!" she panted, in terror. "Do not let him kill me for telling the truth!" It looked indeed as if her life was in danger, for Eliot's face worked with fury, and sparks of fire seemed to flash from his angry eyes. It was with the greatest difficulty that Carmontelle dragged him away from the frightened woman and forced him into a seat. "Be calm," he said. "Do not let her lies put you into a passion." "Prove them lies if you can!" she screamed, losing her self-possession in anger at his incredulity. "I shall certainly endeavor to do so," he replied, calmly. "But go on; finish the details of your story. So our Una was a slave's child, you say? Who, then, was her father?" "You force me to disgrace the dead!" she flashed. "Very well, then, it was Monsieur Lorraine." "Lorraine dead?" he exclaimed. "Yes," sullenly. "I remember Lorraine well. He was an exceedingly homely man. Una does not resemble him in the least," said aggravating Carmontelle. Flashing him a fiery glance, she retorted: "No, but she resembles her mother, the beautiful quadroon whom he gave me for a maid when I came to this house a bride the last year of the war. Una was a pretty little infant then, and the young quadroon, in a fit of jealous fury, told me all. Lorraine whipped her cruelly, and in her rage she stabbed herself to death. The world says that I made him jealous and drove him mad, but it is untrue. Remorse over the quadroon's death drove him inside the walls of a lunatic asylum." She paused a moment, then added: "I have told you now the simple truth, the same that I told the girl in Boston. She is the daughter of Monsieur Lorraine and his beautiful slave, and was in infancy a slave herself, until the failure of the Southern Confederacy freed her in common with all the other slaves." She laughed aloud at the white horror of Eliot Van Zandt's face as he crouched upon a sofa at the further end of the room. "A slave's child the bride of one of the proud, highly born Van Zandts! I am well avenged!" she exclaimed, fiendishly. CHAPTER XLV.