“I—I have a better memory than you, sir; and I mean to prove it to you. I know what has happened at Count Ville-Handry’s house; he has told me all. You have allowed yourself to be carried away so far as to threaten him, to raise your hand against him.”
“He was going to strike his daughter, and I held his arm.”
“No, sir! my dear count is incapable of such violence; and yet his own daughter had dared to taunt him with his weakness, pretending that he had been induced by me to establish a new industrial company.”
Daniel said nothing.
“And you,” continued Miss Brandon,—“you allowed Miss Henrietta to say all these offensive and absurd things. I should induce the count to engage in an enterprise where money might be lost! Why? What interest could I have?”
Her voice began to tremble; and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.
“Interest!” she went on to say, “money! The world can think of no other motive nowadays. Money! I have enough of it. If I marry the count, you know why I do it,—you! And you also know that it depended, and perhaps, at this moment, still depends upon one single man, whether I shall break off that match this very day, now.”
As she said this, she looked at him in a manner which would have caused a statue to tremble on its marble pedestal.
But he, with his heart full of hatred, remained icy, enjoying the revenge which was thus presented to him.
“I will believe whatever you wish to say,” he answered in a mocking tone, “if you will answer me a single question.”