Madeleine bowed her head.
"And you have loved him long? Perhaps you loved him early in your girlhood; perhaps you loved him from the time you first met?"
Madeleine bowed her head again.
"Even as he did you?"
"I do not know," she answered, in a low voice.
"That is strange; men are apt to boast of the length as well as of the strength of their passion," remarked Maurice. "Your lover must be an exception. But perhaps he is unaware that he is blest by your love?"
Without suspicion Madeleine fell into that snare, well-laid by the young lawyer, for she answered, thinking that it would calm the jealous pangs to which Maurice might be subjected,—
"You are right; he is not aware that I love him."
Had her eyes not been downcast, had she looked up for an instant into the face of Maurice, she would have known by its look of radiant ecstasy that she had betrayed herself.
In a tone which emotion rendered unsteady, he went on,—