“Not in that way—he knows better. But he desired to use me as his instrument in the ruin of a man he hated.”
“It is admitted, my daughter, that it is lawful sometimes to do evil that good may come of it. Possibly this lover of yours may have seen in his enemy one of those human abnormalities whose destruction, though demanded by every moral law, can only be compassed by craft. In that case you would be doing a positively pious work in helping him. But, as to this infidelity: the word implies, according to my reading of it, a positive no less than a negative sentiment; an attraction as well as a repulsion.”
“Yes, father.”
“May it conceivably be hinted, then, that you have turned not so much from one lover as towards another, his rival in your fleeting affections?”
The penitent did not answer.
“Speak, daughter,” said the confessor, rather violently clearing his throat.
“I cannot, with confidence,” answered Fanchette, thus adjured, with an air of distressed hesitancy. “Certainly I have felt pity for the man; and I have heard it said that pity excites in one a feeling of fondness for the pitied—but I do not know.”
“You do not? This is not confession, but equivocation. Tell me the truth at once, if you would be absolved.”
“How unsparing you are, father! What if I do love him—a little? It is the fault of the first one for imposing such a task on me. He knew my tender heart—he might have foreseen the inevitable result.”
“I think he might indeed.”