"Those are abstract ideas, and I'm trying to deal with concrete facts. Isn't it true that George Eveleth was a rich man when you married him, and that your extravagance ruined him?"
"It helped to ruin him. I plead guilty to that. I had no knowledge of the value of money; but I don't offer that as an excuse."
"Isn't it true that the Marquis de Bienville was your lover, and that you were thinking of deserting your husband to go with him?"
"It's true that the Marquis de Bienville asked me to do so, and that I was rash enough to turn him into ridicule. I shouldn't have done it if I had known that there was a man in the world capable of taking such a revenge upon a woman as he took on me."
"What revenge?"
"The revenge you're executing at this minute. He said—what very few men, thank God, will say of a woman, even when it's true, and what it takes a dastard to say when it's not true. Even in the case of the fallen woman there's a chivalrous human pity that protects her; while there's something more than that due to the most foolish of our sex who has not fallen. I took it for granted that, at the worst, I could count on that, until I met your friend. His cup of vengeance will be full when he learns that he has given you the power to insult me."
"I don't mean to insult you," he said, in a dogged voice, "but I mean, if possible, to know the truth."
"I'm not concealing it. I'm ready to tell you anything."
"Then, tell me this: isn't it the case that when George Eveleth discovered your relations with Bienville, he challenged him?"
"It's the case that he challenged him, not because of what he discovered, but of what Monsieur de Bienville said."