"Why, you contemptible being! Why, because having handed over to you fifty thousand francs for your share and assistance in the deed, I exacted from you that letter containing an admission of your participation in the affair, in order that I might have that security for your playing me fair; for with that document in existence, to betray me would have been to denounce yourself. That letter was the security, both for my life and fortune. Now are you answered as to my reasons for keeping it so carefully about me?" "I see! It was skilfully devised on your part, for by betraying you I gained nothing but the certainty of perishing with you on the same scaffold; and yet your cleverness has ruined us, while mine has assured our safety, up to the present moment." "Great safety, certainly, if our present situation is taken into consideration!" "Who could foresee the turn things have taken? But according to the ordinary course of events, our crime would have remained for ever under the same veil of concealment my management had thrown over it." "Your management?" "Even so! Why, do you not recollect that, after we had killed the man, you were for merely counterfeiting his writing, in order to despatch a letter as if from himself to his sister, stating his intention of committing suicide in consequence of having utterly ruined himself by losses at play? You believed it a great stroke of policy not to make any mention, in this letter, of the money entrusted to your charge. This was absurd because the sister, being aware of the deposit left in your hands, would be sure to claim it; it was wiser to take the contrary path, and make mention, as we did, of the money deposited with you; so that, should any suspicions arise as to the manner in which the murdered man met his death, you would be the very last on whom suspicion could fall; for how could it be supposed for an instant that you would first kill a man to obtain possession of the treasure placed under your care, and then write to inform the sister of the fact of the money having been lodged with you? And what was the consequence of this skilful suggestion on my part? Every one believed the dead man had destroyed himself. Your high reputation for probity enabled you successfully to deny the circumstance of any such sum of money as that claimed ever having been placed in your hands; and the general impression was, that the unprincipled brother had first dissipated his sister's fortune, and then committed suicide." "But what does all this matter now, since the crime is discovered?" "And who is to be thanked for its discovery? Is it my fault if my letter has become a sort of two-edged sword? Why were you so weak, so silly, as to surrender so formidable a weapon to--that infernal Cecily?" "Silence!" exclaimed Jacques Ferrand, with a fearful expression of countenance; "name her not!"