“Annul our marriage!” I thundered, “at my desire! In the devil’s name, who are you, and whence come you, for it could not be my wife who has sent you with such a message to me?”
The little man had jumped, too, at my violence—like a grasshopper. But my question evidently touched his pride in a sensitive quarter, and roused him to a sense of offence in which he forgot his tremors.
“Truly, sir, truly, you remind me,” he said tartly. “If you will have but a little patience, I was in the very act of seeking my credentials when you so—ahem!—impetuously interrupted me.”
As he spoke, with a skip and a bow, which recalled I know not what vague memory of a bygone merry hour, he drew forth a folded sheet, and, unfolding it, presented it to me. I knew the handwriting too well to doubt its authenticity. How often had I conned and kissed the few poor lines she had ever written to me; ay, although they had been penned in her assumed character!
“To M. de Jennico—
“I empower M. de Schreckendorf to act for me in the affair M. de Jennico wots of, and I agree beforehand to all his arrangements.”
(Thereto the signature.)
Not a word more; not a word of regret, even of anger! The same implacable, unbending resentment.
I stood staring at the lines, reading them and re-reading them, and each letter seemed to print itself like fire upon my soul. I heard, as in a dream, my visitor pour forth further explanations, still in that tone of injury my roughness had evoked.