He shook his head and said thoughtfully: “It’s odd, the blunders we’ve made, you and I, with regard to one another. You must be uncommonly simple to think that the blowing up of the _Glow-worm_, the Pellegrini-Cagliostro shipwreck, and the rubbish related by Prince Lavosneff took me in for an instant. How on earth did you fail to guess that a fellow who is not an imbecile to begin with, and has had the advantage of a course at your school--and what a school!--would read your game as easily as he would an open Bible? That shipwreck was really much too convenient. One is accused of dozens of crimes, one’s hands are red with blood, the police are hunting one hard. Then one blows up an old vessel; and all the past, the crimes, the stolen treasure, the wealth of the monks, all sink in a lump along with it. One passes for dead. One grows a new skin. And then one begins again, a little further off, under another name, to murder, to torture, and to bathe one’s hands in blood. That may take in other people, old girl, but not me. When I read about your shipwreck, I said ‘It’s time to keep one’s eyes open--wide,’ and I came here.” He paused, smiling at her, a chilling smile; then went on: “But hang it all, Josephine, your visit was inevitable! And it was inevitable that you must clear the way for it by the help of some confederate. It was inevitable that the yacht of Prince Lavosneff should come cruising off this coast one night. It was inevitable that you must climb the staircase in the cliff which you had once descended on a stretcher. Well, I took my precautions; and my first care was to look about to see if there wasn’t somebody I knew in the neighborhood. A confederate, it’s the very first step in the art. And at once I recognized our young friend Dominique, since I had happened to see him, a detail of which you were ignorant, on the box of your carriage waiting at the door of Bridget Rousselin. Dominique is a faithful servant; but the fear of the police and a sound thrashing softened him to such a degree that he transferred all his faithfulness to me; and he gave proof of it by sending you false reports and by digging for your feet, in concert with me, the pitfall into which you have stumbled. As for his reward: why, there are the ten bank-notes, out of _your_ pocket, which you will never see again, for your faithful servant has gone back to the château and is under my protection. That’s how we stand, my dear Josephine. I might indeed have spared you this little comedy and welcomed you here openly, for the mere pleasure of shaking you by the hand. But I wished to see how you would direct the operation, remaining myself in the background, and above all I wished to see how you would receive the news of the supposed murder of Clarice d’Etigues.”