"I am afraid, Juliette," said he, "that is not your strongest reason. Your mother has a country house where you can live with her far away from the hardhearted world. With your fortune you can live anywhere you please where your disgrace is not known, and where your beauty and your sweet nature would soon bring you new friends. But confess that you do not wish to leave Leoni." "I do wish to," I replied, weeping, "but I cannot." "Unfortunate, most unfortunate of women!" said Henryet sadly; "you are naturally good and beautiful, but you lack pride. Where noble pride is lacking, there is nothing to build upon. Poor weak creature! I pity you from the bottom of my soul, for you have profaned your heart, you have soiled it by contact with a vile heart, you have bent your neck under a hand stained with crime, you love a dastard! I ask myself how I could ever have loved you, but I also ask myself how I could fail to pity you now." "Why, what in the name of heaven has Leoni done," I demanded, terrified and appalled by his manner and his language, "that you assume the right to speak of him in this way?" "Do you doubt my right, madame? Do you wish me to tell you why Leoni, who is personally brave,--that is beyond question,--and who is the best swordsman that I know, has never thought fit to pick a quarrel with me, who never touched a sword in my life, and who drove him out of Paris with a word, out of Brussels with a glance?" "That is inconceivable," I said, in dire distress. "Is it possible that you don't know whose mistress you are?" continued Henryet earnestly; "has no one ever told you the marvellous adventures of Chevalier Leoni? have you never blushed for having been his accomplice and for having fled with a swindler after robbing your father's shop?" I uttered a cry of anguish and hid my face in my hands; then I raised my head and exclaimed with all my strength: "That is false! I never was guilty of such a despicable act! Leoni is no more capable of it than I am. We had not travelled forty leagues on the way to Geneva when Leoni stopped in the middle of the night, asked for a box, and put all the jewels in it to send them back to my father." "Are you quite sure that he did that?" inquired Henryet with a contemptuous laugh. "I am sure of it!" I cried; "I saw the box, I saw Leoni put the diamonds into it." "And you are sure that the box didn't accompany you all the rest of your journey? you are sure that it wasn't unpacked at Venice?"