"Thank God?" I echoed in weak wonder.
"I thank God, yes, because it was killing me to believe that you were Ellaline—to believe you false, and frivolous, and a flirt, just because of the blood I thought you had in your veins. And I exaggerated everything you did, till I made a mountain out of each fancied fault. That fellow Burden brought Ellaline here—just married to her Frenchman to-day—because he wanted to ruin you. He told me with pride how he'd ferretted out the whole secret—traced you to your address in Versailles, learned your real name—told everything, in fact, except that he'd been blackmailing you, forcing you for your friend's sake to actions you hated. He didn't tell me that part, naturally, but there was no need, because I guessed——"
"What—what have you done to him?" The words came limping, because of the look in his eyes, which shot forth a sword.
"Oh, unluckily it's under my own roof, so I could do no more than bid him clear out if he didn't want to be kicked out!"
"Gone!" I whispered.
"Yes, gone. And as Mrs. Senter's very loyal to her nephew, she prefers to leave with him, though she has had nothing to do with his plottings—didn't even know, and I asked her to stay. She insists on going to-night when he does. I'm sorry. But it can't be helped. I cannot think of her now."
"Ellaline——" I began faintly; but he cut me short, with a kind of generous impatience. "Yes, yes, you shall see her. She wants to see you, now that she understands, but——"
"Understands?"
"Why, you see, that little beast, Dick Burden—whose mother's staying near where Ellaline was in Scotland—went there straight from Bamborough, and put the girl up to believe you'd been playing her false—prejudicing me against her interests, trying to keep for yourself things that ought to be hers; so apparently she worked herself into a hysterical state—must have, or she wouldn't have believed him against you; and the instant she was married to her Frenchman, who'd come to claim her, all three dashed off here to 'confront' you, as that cad Burden explained to me. I couldn't understand what they were all driving at just at first, but I saw that the girl was the living image of her mother, consequently the thing didn't need as much explaining in any way as it might otherwise."
"She was horribly afraid you wouldn't let her marry him," I broke in, getting breath and voice back at last.