She had spoken so far with self-restraint. Now, suddenly, she flashed out superbly-- “You would not do the same--oh, _mon Dieu_, no! but you will condone his wickedness--yes, that is it! Liberty to you all is the liberty to act as you like; to use the State and abuse it; to use the woman and throw her aside!” “Hush!” said Ned, a little startled and concerned. “Your liberty, I take it, you have committed to the keeping of my lord. He may curtail it, if you talk so loud.” She drew back imperiously. “The old tipsy man!” she cried, in a pregnant voice. “I decoy, and I repulse, and I madden him. I have learnt my lesson, monsieur. Hark, then!” She held up her hand. From the dining-room adjacent came a quavering chaunt--the maudlin sing-song of ancient inebriety. “I know,” said Ned. “He is half-way through his second bottle.” “Is it the music,” cried the girl, “that I have bartered my honour to listen to? There are greater voices in the air--the thunder of cannon; the roar of an emancipated people!” “Certainly it is true, by report,” said Ned, “that the French Bastille is fallen into the hands of the mob--a consummation remotely influenced, no doubt, by the Club of Nature’s Gentry.” “Into the hands of Liberty, monsieur. The reign of falsehood is dead. The ideal triumphs, however far its wicked apostles may have sought to misconstrue it! And I am of the people! I am of the people--the people!” She gazed up--as if in a sudden inspired ecstasy--then buried her face in her hands. Her full bosom heaved. She was beyond all control overwrought. “Théroigne!” exclaimed Ned, moved out of, and despite himself. She looked up again, with flashing wet eyes. “My love is sworn to Liberty!” she cried; “my hate to those who would make of her a pander to their own base desires. So much of his teaching remains; and let him abide by its consequences. It is for me to drive the moral home, to reveal him for the thing he is--the thing he is!” Then Ned, holding no brief for St Denys, was tempted to an inexcusable utterance-- “He was the father of your child, Théroigne.” The girl started as if she had been struck. She raised her eyes and clasped her hands; and she said, in a quivering voice-- “I thank God--oh, I thank God he is dead. The little poor infant! And what would he have made of his baby--he, that had the heart to disinherit and condemn to lifelong torture his own brother that he had played with as a child!” Ned stood amazed. “His brother!” he cried--“the sailor that perished in the West Indies! But monsieur himself told me of his brother’s fate.” She gazed at him intensely. During some moments the evidences of a hard mental struggle were in her face. Then she gave out a deep sigh. “He lied, as always,” she said in a low voice: “Lucien is at this day a wretched prisoner in the Salpétrière, the madman’s hospital of Paris.” “Théroigne! What do you say!” cried Ned.