'Why did you do this?' cried Martin, turning almost fiercely upon her. 'You say yourself that this is a bad man, and that nothing will stop him when his mind is once made up to the commission no matter of what crime, and yet you bring him to the house and present him to this girl, whom it was so necessary to shield and protect.' He spoke so wrathfully that Statham looked up in surprise at his friend, and then glancing with pity at the shrinking figure of Pauline, said, in mitigation: 'You must recollect that Mr. Wetter discovered Madame Du Tertre's address by accident, and that he was her cousin!' 'He is not my cousin,' said Pauline, in a low subdued voice, gazing at Martin with tearful eyes, 'I deceived you in that statement, as in many others about Mr. Wetter, and about myself.' 'Not your cousin!' said Martin; 'why, then, did you represent him to be so?' 'Because he insisted on it,' said Pauline, gesticulating freely; 'because he had a certain hold over me which I could not shake off, and which he would have exercised to my detriment if I had not implicitly obeyed him.' 'But how could he have done anything to your detriment so far as we were concerned?' asked Martin. 'Very easily,' replied Pauline. 'It was my earnest desire for--for several reasons to live in the house with Alice as her companion. And Mr. Wetter would have prevented that.' 'How could he have done so?' 'By exercising the influence which he possessed, and which lay in his acquaintance with a portion of my early life. He would have told you what he knew of me, and you would not have suffered me to remain with Alice.' 'You mean to say--' cried Martin, with a certain shrinking. 'O, don't mistake me,' she interrupted; 'I was never wicked, as you seem to imagine; only the manner of my bringing-up, and the associations of my youth were such that, if you had known them, you might not have thought me a desirable companion for your friend.' 'Let me ask you one question, Madame Du Tertre,' said Humphrey Statham. 'Up to this crisis you have undoubtedly discharged your duties with fidelity, and proved yourself to be Alice Claxton's warm and excellent friend. But what first induced you to seek for that post of companion--what made you desire to ally yourself so closely with this young woman?' 'What first influenced me to seek her out?' said Pauline; 'not love for her, you may be assured of that. When first I saw this girl who has played such a part in my life, her head was resting on the shoulder of a man who, in bidding her adieu, bent down to kiss her upturned face, down which the tears were rolling. And that man was my husband.' 'Your husband!' cried Martin. 'My husband. I knew not who the girl was; I had never seen her before; I had never heard of the existence of any one between whom and my husband there could properly exist such familiarity, and I at once jumped to the conclusion that he was her lover, and I hated her accordingly.'