"Madame never has cared for you, monsieur, for you and yours. She did not marry you for any liking, but because of spite. Not spite from your father having punished one of her precious family--they are all a bad lot--a witch's brood! faugh! but to Mademoiselle Daniels whom she feared would secure the prize. Madame carried on dreadful! When she went away last time, it is true she had a telegram from her uncle--but that was a happy accident. She was going to bolt anyway, and that came in so nicely! She was planning to elope with one of her conquests--the Viscount--" "I know!" "You know? Well, you don't know that the dead man found in the ditch was the Viscount--" "I saw him killed!" in the same measured tone. "Oh!" She paused, but recovering, she continued, in a lower voice and looking furtively around: "You cannot know that she came back with no good end. I believe it was to meet the gentleman who came in at the same time, a-pretending to buy the house--" "M. Cantagnac!" muttered the inventor, a tolerable flock of suspicions which that ingenious individual had unintentionally excited, rushing upon his brain. "He's no Marseillais--he's a German, and he is a secret agent. He is--he is--well, I may make a clean breast of it--he is one you ought to have remembered, the major whom you cudgelled in Munich--" "Von Sendlingen!" "Yes, and a colonel--I do not know but he is a general now; he has the manner and means of one!" said Hedwig, shuddering. "He knows all of madame's peccadilloes--ay, all her crimes--" "Crimes! be careful, girl!" "Yes, crime, for she killed her little boy! Thank heaven, I had no hand in that--she would not trust me there, and that shows I am not so very bad a woman, don't it? She poisoned the little innocent as surely as we stand here under the eye of God!" "Go on; go on," said Clemenceau, hoarsely. "The colonel threatened to tell you these and other things unless she consented to sell him all your business secrets--and give him the model gun that goes off without any powder and caps." "Ah! she consented?" growled the inventor, grinding his teeth and his eyes kindling. "Nobody can hold out against the colonel. He soon made me play the spy on everybody for his benefit. But this is not all!" "Not all! what a sink of iniquity! Would she poison Mademoiselle Rebecca, too?" "I do not doubt it! The old witch her grandmother must have taught her all the tricks of her trade. But I meant to say that she is setting her cap at poor, dear, young M. Antonino--" "I know that. Take your money! and live honestly." "No, monsieur," she replied with some dignity. "And here is money that the colonel gave me. It burns me! I beg you to give it toward some good work, which you understand better than me. Will you not--and forgive me?" "Have you anything more to say?"