“O, perfectly, madam!” she said, with a curtsey that made her balloon. “We make it our pains to know all about our visitors. Believe me, you was under surveillance from the moment you stepped ashore at the Mole. It was not very likely, was it, that we should overlook the arrival of her as seemed wishin’ to reap the discord she had sowed among us a while back? Be sure we know you, madam, well enough, and the reputation you built for yourself in Paris too!” Startled as I was, I had a difficulty to refrain from retorting that my reputation would bear comparison with hers. But I bit my lip on the temptation, and for the moment took refuge from everything in tears, to which, however, she listened silent. “I did not refer to that,” I cried, looking up with clasped hands and swimming eyes, “but to the goodness of a great and beautiful lady, who once succoured a poor girl in distress.” “And I include that too in my knowledge,” said she; “and much gratitude you’ve shown to the class as befriended you.” “Gratitude!” I cried. “O, believe me, that, until I reached here, I never even guessed that, in conspiring against royalty, I was conspiring against you, my saviour.” She sat down on a chair, near breaking it. “Didn’t you?” she said, gathering the folds of her cloak about her. “Well, supposing you didn’t, what then? You ain’t goin’ to forego your principles for a sentiment like that--don’t tell me.” “If you won’t believe me”--I murmured despairingly. “Why look here, Madame Lavasse, or Please, or whatever your damned name is,” she said, shaking a hectoring finger at me, “one may help a girl, but a woman helps herself, which I make no bones of guessing you’ve managed to do pretty free. The question with you is whether Jacobinism or royalty is going to pay best; and if you’re proposin’ to change about and turn informer, no better moral than profit is at the bottom of your little game, I’ll vow. Well, I don’t say but in that case we’re open to treat; only I’ll ask you to drop the artless girl, which don’t sit well on you at your age, and talk with me like one woman of the world to another.” I rose to my feet with a burning face. “Go!” I said, with an imperious gesture; “insult me no more. Have I not suffered wrong and outrage enough, but my heart must be made the sport of every common”-- “Highty-tighty, miss!” She rose in astonishment. For a moment she stood conning me, my quivering lips and heaving bosom. Then of a sudden she smiled. “Well, perhaps”--she said. “There, I’ve a way of letting my tongue run away with me; but it’s no example for you to follow. I should have remembered the glass houses in the sayin’ before I twitted you with your past. Only for sure, Diana Please, it can never be said against me that I betrayed my love that betrayed me.” My rage was all gone. I dropped my head, with a sad little cry. The sound of it brought her to my side. “Was he not your love,” she whispered--“him that came with you?”