“I neither know nor care. With him I will treat—with no other.”
“I will tell him so. But you had better hear what I have to say on the part of Captain Desfrayne. Unfortunately, we cannot prove your marriage with this Gilardoni. Pray, madam, may I ask you one question?”
“Speak.”
“How is it that if, as you declare, you have never until this day heard of Leonardo Gilardoni, his name causes you to shudder violently?”
“That is your fancy, sir. I have a slight attack of ague, from which I shiver every now and then,” replied Madam Guiscardini icily.
“I do not believe you, Madam Guiscardini; but, as I was saying, we cannot prove your first marriage, because you have stolen the original register, and therefore——”
The young woman started from her seat in a kind of frenzy. A moment’s reflection, however, caused her to sink back.
“Mr. Amberley,” she said, very calmly, looking him straight in the face with an expression of candor on her own lovely visage, “every one has, I believe, a motive for what they do. You say you come hither to-day in the name of justice. What your object may further be I do not know, as you have not as yet deigned to enlighten me upon the precise nature of the demand you apparently intend making upon me. I am convinced that you, and it may be Captain Desfrayne, are deceived by the concocted story of a man who desires to extort money. I am supposed to be rich—I do not deny that I have a great deal of money: I am therefore regarded as a person to be preyed upon.
“Captain Desfrayne may be actuated by mean and cruel objects in pursuing me, whom he has always treated in so abominable a manner—his jealousy, his ill conduct, obliged me unwillingly to leave him, for I desired to do my duty as a wife, though I did not love him. You and he have, you say, listened to a story told by some man who asserts that—that—that I was—that I was married to him. Plainly, why do you and Captain Desfrayne lend yourselves to this infamous conspiracy? I do not intend to tamely submit to robbery and insult, I can assure you. Who is this man?”
“He is Captain Desfrayne’s valet,” said Frank Amberley, who had not attempted even once to interrupt the long harangue with which he had been favored.