"Threats! And that you may learn they are not vain ones, learn, first, that I have no sister—"
"What, madame?"
"I am the mother of this child!"
"You?"
"I—I made a circuitous route to reach my end—coined a tale to excite your interest; but you are pitiless. I raise the mask, you are for war. Well, war be it then!"
"War! Because I refuse to associate myself with you in a criminal machination! What audacity!"
"Listen to me, sir! Your reputation as an honest man is established, acknowledged, undisputed—"
"Because deserved; and, therefore, you must have lost your reason to make me such a proposal as you have done, and then threaten me because I will not accede to it."
"I know, sir, better than any one how much reputations for immaculate virtue are to be distrusted; they often mask wantonness in women and roguery in men."
"Madame?"