She spoke so loud, that her voice must have been distinctly heard in the vestibule.
“Lower, madam, I pray you speak lower,” said M. Folgat.
She cast upon him a crushing glance; and, raising her voice still higher, she went on,—
“Yes, I understand very well that you are afraid of being heard. But I—what have I to fear? I could wish the whole world to hear us, and to judge between us. Lower, you say? Why should I speak less loud? Do you think that if Count Claudieuse were not on his death-bed, this letter would not have long since been in his hands? Ah, he would soon have satisfaction for such an infamous letter, he! But I, a poor woman! I have never seen so clearly that the world thinks my husband is lost already, and that I am alone in this world, without a protector, without friends.”
“But, madam, M. de Boiscoran pledges himself to the most perfect secrecy.”
“Secrecy in what? In your cowardly insults, your abominable plots, of which this, no doubt, is but a beginning?”
M. Folgat turned livid under this insult.
“Ah, take care, madam,” he said in a hoarse voice: “we have proof, absolute, overwhelming proof.”
The countess stopped him by an imperious gesture, and with the haughtiest disdain, grief, and wrath, she said,—
“Well, then, produce your proof. Go, hasten, act as you like. We shall see if the vile calumnies of an incendiary can stain the pure reputation of an honest woman. We shall see if a single speck of this mud in which you wallow can reach up to me.”