"It remains for me to touch upon two other points," continued the marquis. "I have reflected much, during these last days, upon the character of the person you are going to marry. You love her. Yes, you must love her dearly to have spoken to me as you did when we were together at Saint-Mihiel. You see, I do not underrate your affection for me. You will be tempted to open your heart to her. If she doesn't deserve to be loved as you love her, do not do it; and if she does deserve it, do not do it. I ask you to give me your word that she shall never learn this ghastly secret from you." "I give it to you, instantly," Landri replied. He added, in a low voice, so much in dread was he of another outburst of that rage which, he felt, was still smouldering: "But if I should allow myself to tell her the whole truth, I think--that I should tell her nothing new." "You have spoken to her already!" ejaculated M. de Claviers in a threatening tone. "Confess it. Ah! if you have done that--" "I have not done it," Landri protested; and with tears in his eyes, he added: "I entreat you, never believe that I could have acted otherwise than you have taught me to act all your life and are still teaching me at this moment. I will tell you everything. Then you can pass judgment on me." And he began by describing the first indication--her sudden entreaty to him not to go up to the invalid's apartment on Rue de Solferino, on his way from Paris to Grandchamp; and how, after the visit to Jaubourg and the revelation, he had said to himself: "Madame Olier knows all,"--and in what a state of feverish excitement he had arrived at her house, and the horror he had had of speaking, and his silence in the face of her grief, and that grief itself, and their betrothal in that moment of supreme emotion. Then he told of the letter he had received from her immediately after the Hugueville affair, and of the others, in which she had not made a single allusion to M. de Claviers.