"You trusted to that drawer," he suggested.
"No, no, I knew the danger, but I couldn't give them up. They stood for the best part of my life, the tenderest, the happiest. I've been a weak, wicked woman!"
"Any secrets in these letters will be scrupulously respected," he assured her, "unless they have a bearing on this crime. Is there anything you wish to say before I go?"
"Are you going?" she said weakly. And then, turning to him with tear-stained face, she asked for a moment to collect herself. "I want to say this," she went on, "that I didn't tell you the truth about Kittredge and Martinez. There was trouble between them; he speaks about it in one of his letters. It was about the little girl at Notre-Dame!"
"You mean Martinez was attentive to her?"
"Yes."
"Did she encourage him?"
"I don't know. She behaved very strangely—she seemed attracted to him and afraid of him at the same time. Martinez told me what an extraordinary effect he had on the girl. He said it was due to his magnetic power."
"And Kittredge objected to this?"
"Of course he did, and they had a quarrel. It's all in one of those letters."