"Behaving as you're behaving now; and as you've been behaving these last few weeks. I'm not blind, you know. You have been trying your power over me. I suppose that's what you'd call the trick. Well, my dear Madalena, it won't work. I hoped you might realize that without making a scene; but you wouldn't. You've brought this on yourself, and there's nothing for it now but a straight talk.
"My wife is not jealous. It's not in her to be jealous. If she doesn't like you, Madalena, it's instinctive mistrust. I don't think she's even seen the claws sticking out of the velvet. But I have. I've seen exactly what you are up to. You talk about our 'past'. You want to force my hand. You expect me, because I've been a decent pal, and paid what I thought was due, to pay higher, a fancy price. I won't. My wife had no hand in keeping you out of the Easter house party. It was I who said you weren't to be asked. You had to be taught that you couldn't dictate terms. You wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, so the lesson had to be more severe than I meant. Now we understand each other."
"I doubt it!" cried Madalena.
"You mean I don't understand you? I think I do, my friend. And I'm not afraid. If I'm not a white angel, certainly you're not. We're tarred with the same brush. Forget this afternoon, if you like, and I'll forget it. We can go back to where we were before. But only on the promise that you'll be sensible. No cat-scratchings. No mysteries."
It was all that the Countess de Santiago could do to bite back the threat which alone could have given her relief. Yet she did bite it back. Her triumph would be incomplete in ruining the man if he could not know that he owed his punishment to her. But she must be satisfied with the second best thing. She dared not put him on his guard, and she dared not let him guess that she meant to strike.
He would wonder perhaps, when the blow fell, and say to himself, "Can Madalena have done this?" She must so act that his answer would be, "No. It's an accident of fate." Knight was not the sort of man who for a mere wandering suspicion, without an atom of proof, would pull a woman down. And there would be no proof.
"You are not kind," was the only response she ventured. "And you are not just. I did not want to 'scratch.' I would not injure you for the world, even if I could. Yet it does hurt to think our friendship in the past has meant nothing to you, when it has meant so much to me. It hurts. But I must bear it. I shall not trouble you about my feelings again."
If she had hoped that her meekness might make him relent she was disappointed. He merely said, "Very good. We'll go back to where we were."
That same evening Madalena wrote to Ruthven Smith. She took pains to disguise her handwriting, and not satisfied with that precaution, went out in a taxi and posted the letter in Hampstead.
It was a short letter, and it had no signature; but it made an impression on Ruthven Smith.