“If I am, I haven’t spied in vain. Not only can I ruin you with du Laurier, and before the world, but I can ruin him utterly and in all ways.”
“No—no,” I gasped. “You cannot. You’re boasting. You can do nothing.”
“Nothing to-night, perhaps. I’m not speaking of to-night. I am giving you time. But to-morrow—or the day after. It’s much the same to me. At first, when I began to suspect that something had been taken from its place, I had no proof. I had to get that, and I did get it—nearly all I wanted. This affair of Dundas might have been planned for my advantage. It is perfect. All its complications are just so many links in a chain for me. Girard—the man Dundas chose to employ—was the very man I’d sent to England; on what errand, do you think? To watch your friend the British Foreign Secretary. He followed Dundas to Paris on the bare suspicion that there’d been, communication between the two, and he was preparing a report for me when—Dundas called on him.”
“What connection can Ivor Dundas’ coming to Paris have with Raoul du Laurier?” I dared to ask.
“You know best as to that.”
“They have never met. Both are men of honour, and—”
“Men of honour are tricked by women sometimes, and then they have to suffer for being fools, as if they had been villains. Think what such a man—a man of honour, as you say—would feel when he found out the woman!”
“A woman can be calumniated as well as a man,” I said. “You are so unscrupulous you would stoop to anything, I know that. Raoul du Laurier has done nothing; I—I have done nothing of which to be ashamed. Yet you can lie about us, ruin him perhaps by a plot, as if he were guilty, and—and do terrible harm to me.”
“I can—without the trouble of lying. And I will, unless you’ll give up du Laurier and make up your mind to marry me. I always meant to have you. You are the one woman worthy of me.”
“You are the man most unworthy of any woman. But, give me till to-morrow evening—at this time—to decide. Will you promise me that?”