Well, if this confession was so unpalatable to the listeners as to add a hundredfold to Madame Gondran’s jealousy and hatred, it afforded at the same time a text for ample revenge. The match was no match, they declared, in English law; Miss Lucie was none the less for it betrayed and abandoned. Her seducer, of course, had only caught her into a very ancient snare, and, having tangled her in its meshes, had gone off laughing. Indeed, it would appear, he had hinted as much to Mr Delane before running away, and, by that shameless boast, had caused a rupture between himself and his tutor. He was gone, anyhow and finally, never to return, and utter ruin and disgrace were all that remained to the poor lady out of that short rhapsody of passion; unless--unless what? Why, grieved and shame-stricken though he was over this downfall of a cherished idol, the Gouverneur, still great and magnanimous in his love, would consent to save her reputation, at the cost of his own shattered ideals, by marrying her himself at a moment’s notice, and afterwards removing her to a place where gossip could find no data for detraction. They may have lied, or spoken the truth--I know not. But this I know: she was wax in their powerful hands--a poor, dazed, heartbroken, will-less creature. They took her to Turin, we heard, and there the man married her. And there, on the very morrow of the wedding, the old witch Gondran was found dead in her bed--struck down, in the moment of triumph, by the ecstasy of her spite. She lies in the Cimitero on the Chivasso Road. I have seen the blasted flowers on her grave. But now all this time I was thinking what to do. And all the time I was still thinking and thinking, when the suspicion first arose that Milord, instead of having taken himself off, as supposed, had really, in some adventurous wandering, come by his death in the mountains, since, indeed, he had never been seen to emerge from among them at any part. And suddenly there came over from England a lady, his relative, to inquire into his disappearance; and Mr Delane was questioned, and told all he knew, confessing he had thought Milord had bolted to evade the consequences of a scrape best not referred to. Then one day I went to learn more of what was doing, and found the inquestation over, and Mr Delane gone home to England with his wife. And again that set me to thinking more, and again more.