“Look at me, I say.”
Abject already in that revelation, the maid, half-whimpering, again essayed to lift her hang-dog eyes, and, in the very struggle to brazen out her falsehood, collapsed and burst into tears.
“Liar!” said Isabella softly. She was wrought beyond her gentle self: the wanton wickedness of the slander—never for one moment believed else by her incorruptible heart—had transformed her from a Hebe into a Megaera. “Are you not a liar?”
Fanchette, weeping hysterically, sought to gasp out an excuse:
“If I misunderstood his meaning——”
But lovely scorn swept the cowardly pretence aside:
“You misunderstood nothing. It is I who have misunderstood, who have been blind all this time to the true character of the despicable creature I have trusted. You vile thing, so to hire yourself out to traduce a noble name! Who urged you to it? In whose pay are you? Tell me, for I will know.”
She was translated, the sweet tolerant soul—stung to a passion the more deadly by reason of the sunshine and happiness from which she had been torn. Fanchette, completely cowed, sobbed and shivered in her corner. She had never even guessed at the existence of these slumbering fires, had never calculated on a faith so obstinate as to be utterly impervious to the assaults of jealousy. She was overwhelmed, terrified, not only by the crushing nature of the retort upon her, but by the particular insight which it revealed.
“O,—O!” she gasped and cried: “I will tell you, mademoiselle—I will tell you everything, if you will only give me a moment to recover.”
“You want time,” cried scorn, “to invent new lies. But you need not hope to deceive me again. I see it all at last—the hints, the cunning preparation of the ground, the snare you thought to lay for unsuspecting feet. And while I was confiding in you, resting on your sympathy, believing you my friend! O, shame upon such infamy! I will have you whipped, tortured, unless you confess to me at once that it was all a lie.”