“I know,” he answered. “He had confessed to me before you married him.”
An irrepressible moan came from her, pitiful, heart-rending. He broke upon it passionately,—
“I told him, what I tell you now—that, on my soul, he had done right; but that, having done what he had done, the prospect of his union with you had become impossible. To me, though what I am, the thought was horrible. Believe me, Madame—before God, believe that I had no thought of myself in so urging him.”
She drew a little away. Her eyes were already freezing to him. But his emotion made him blind.
“I am not to blame for what followed,” he hurried on. “The villain—that same dog Bonito over-reached me. He took advantage of my absence to practise on one—there I will not pain you with the record. You know who came to you. She had been warned by me against abetting him she nursed in any designs upon your ignorance. I do not blame him. If you can do me any justice in your woman’s heart, you will guess why. He staked his soul against a chance for which I would have sacrificed a thousand heavens. But, with her—it was different. She paid for her temerity with my curse.”
He ended, greatly agitated. His eyes were lowered before her. He did not see the new abhorrence of him spring and flame in hers. He did not see how the majesty of her womanhood rose to answer and reject him.
“You cursed her for my sake, Monsieur?” she said quietly.
“If you will have it so,” he answered low.
“And this, her suborner, her confederate;—you say he shall trouble me no longer?”
“Not while I have hands to strike, and teeth to hold.”