“Nay!” he interrupted energetically, “I will distress myself on your account, my Margot. Listen, dear, I have not spoken of these things to you before; something always seemed to stop me when I wished to question you. But, somehow, I feel as if I could not go away and leave you now without asking you one question. . . . You need not answer it if you do not wish,” he added, as he noted a sudden hard look, almost of apprehension, darting through her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked simply.
“Does Sir Percy Blakeney know that . . . I mean, does he know the part you played in the arrest of the Marquis de St. Cyr?”
She laughed—a mirthless, bitter, contemptuous laugh, which was like a jarring chord in the music of her voice.
“That I denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, you mean, to the tribunal that ultimately sent him and all his family to the guillotine? Yes, he does know. . . . I told him after I married him. . . .”
“You told him all the circumstances—which so completely exonerated you from any blame?”
“It was too late to talk of ‘circumstances’; he heard the story from other sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could no longer plead extenuating circumstances: I could not bemean myself by trying to explain—”
“And?”
“And now I have the satisfaction, Armand, of knowing that the biggest fool in England has the most complete contempt for his wife.”
She spoke with vehement bitterness this time, and Armand St. Just, who loved her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy finger upon an aching wound.