“Why should you suppose me,” I retorted, “to be so foolish as to bring you such a story if it could not be proved to be true? I ask nothing more or less than that you should inquire into the matter.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” she answered. “I know too much already.”
“I am sorry,” I answered, “to be so seriously at issue with you on such a theme, but I am compelled to insist upon my right.”
“I shall have nothing to say on the matter,” she answered, “until the count returns. He will be the final judge of what is to be done; but until he comes I shall do my duty, and it is no part of my duty to allow my niece to listen to the persuasions of a man who has only too clearly proved his powers in that way already.”
“Only a few weeks ago,” I said, desperately, “I had an interview with the Baroness Bonnar, in which I warned her not to intrude upon your society again.”
“I know all about it!” cried Lady Rollinson, with an indignant movement of her fan. “You tried to bully the poor thing into silence. You may save yourself any further trouble, Captain Fyffe. My mind is made up, and I shall do what I have decided to do. In my days,” she added, beginning to cry, which made the situation more intolerable than ever—“in my days, when a gentleman was told by a lady that his presence was unwelcome in her house he would never have intruded.”
“My dear Lady Rollinson,” I responded, controlling myself with a very considerable effort, “you must listen to reason. You have been made the dupe of a thoroughly heartless and unprincipled woman.”
“That appears to be your method!” She flashed back at me. “You can say what you please about my character, now that I know yours. Thank God I am too well known to fear your rancorous tongue!”
The position was actually maddening, and I had never dreamed until then that even a woman who was bent on revenging what she conceived to be a gross injury to one of her own sex could be so utterly unreasonable and deaf to argument.
“I repeat, madame,” I declared, “that the Count Ruffiano has been betrayed to the enemy by this woman whose lies you accept as if they were gospel. Brunow confessed to me barely six-and-thirty hours ago that he acted as her agent in that villainous transaction. Is that a woman whose bare word is to be taken against the overwhelming proof an honest man can bring?”