"Come, come, you are offended with me."
She gave him a glance of mingled disdain and resentment; but he went on, in a timid, wistful tone—
"I know that my conduct must have seemed strange to you, and I acknowledge that nothing can justify a man for suddenly leaving the woman he loves—I do not dare to say the woman who loves him—without a word of explanation. But, dear Angelique, I was jealous."
"Jealous!" she repeated incredulously.
"I tried my best to overcome the feeling, and I hid my suspicions from you. Twenty times I came to see you bursting with anger and determined to overwhelm you with reproaches, but at the sight of your beauty I forgot everything but that I loved you. My suspicions dissolved before a smile; one word from your lips charmed me into happiness. But when I was again alone my terrors revived, I saw my rivals at your feet, and rage possessed me once more. Ah! you never knew how devotedly I loved you."
She let him speak without interruption; perhaps the same thought was in her mind as in Quennebert's, who, himself a past master in the art of lying; was thinking—
"The man does not believe a word of what he is saying."
But the treasurer went on—
"I can see that even now you doubt my sincerity."
"Does my lord desire that his handmaiden should be blunt? Well, I know that there is no truth in what you say."