“Oh! yes; so unhappy!”
She was conscious of the subject on which he was about to speak, and her head sank sorrowfully on her bosom.
“Tell me, how did it happen? I wish to know.”
But she could not find words to answer him.
“Did he take advantage of you, or was it with your consent?”
Then she stammered, in a voice that was barely audible:
“Mon Dieu! I do not know; I swear to you, I do not know, more than a babe unborn. I will not lie to you—I cannot! No, I have no excuse to offer; I cannot say he beat me. You had left me, I was beside myself, and it happened, how, I cannot, no, I cannot tell!”
Sobs choked her utterance, and he, ashy pale and with a great lump rising in his throat, waited silently for a moment. The thought that she was unwilling to tell him a lie, however, was an assuagement to his rage and grief; he went on to question her further, anxious to know the many things, that as yet he had been unable to understand.
“My father has kept you here, it seems?”
She replied with her resigned, courageous air, without raising her eyes: