"Madame," I said, "last night, as I lay in my bed, bethinking me of the morrow, and wondering what it held in store for me, I heard the sound of a woman weeping. It rose from the little room beneath me; from the room wherein I fought Count Lukstein. 'Twas the most desolate sound that ever my ears have hearkened to--a woman weeping alone in the black of the night. I stole down the staircase and opened the door. I saw that the woman who wept was yourself." "'Twas for my husband," she interposed, very sharp and quick, and my heart sank. Yet her words seemed to quicken my desire to reveal the truth. They woke in me a strange and morbid jealousy of the man. I longed to cry out: "He was a coward; false to you, false to his friend, false to me." "And in London?" I asked, temporising again. "The morning I came to you unannounced. You were at the spinnet." "'Twas for my husband," she repeated, with a certain stubbornness. "But we will keep to the question we have in hand, if you please--the cause of your dispute with Count Lukstein." "I will not tell you it." I spoke with no great firmness, and on that account most like I helped to confirm her reawakened suspicions. "Will not?" says she, her voice cold and sneering. "They are brave words though unbravely spoken. You forget I have the advantage and can compel you." "Madame," I replied, "you overrate your powers. Your servants can bind me hand and foot, but they cannot compel me to speak what I will not." "Have you no lie ready? What? Does your invention fail?" and she suddenly rose from the stool in a whirlwind of passion. "God forgive me!" she cried. "For even now I believed you." She ceased abruptly and pushed her head forward, listening. The creak of wheels came faintly to our ears. "You hear that? It is Mr. Buckler's carriage, and Mr. Buckler rides within it. Do you understand? The carriage takes you to Meran; you will not be the first traveller who has disappeared on the borders of Italy. I am afraid your friend at Venice will wait for you in vain." The carriage rumbled down the hill, and we both listened until the sound died away. "For the future you shall labour as my peasant on the hillside among the woods, with my peasants for companionship, until your thoughts grow coarse with your body, and your soul dwindles to the soul of a peasant. So shall you live, and so shall you die, for the wrong which you have done to me." She towered above me in her outburst, her eyes flashing with anger. "And you dared to charge me with trickery! Why, what else has your life been? From the night you went clothed as a woman to Bristol Bridewell, what else has your life been? A woman! The part fitted you well; you have all the cunning. You need but the addition of a petticoat." The bitterness of her speech stung me into a fury, and, forgetful of the continence I owed to her: "Madame!" I said, "I proved the contrary to your husband."