"What others? Come, come, marquis, you are too persistent!"
"Hush, Guillaume!" said D'Alvimar, still affecting a disdainful attitude. "This must end in a sword thrust. We are simply wasting time."
"Ah! but I am not in so much haste now," rejoined the marquis. "I insist upon knowing the baptismal name and the family name of the sister of Monsieur de Villareal, de Sciarra and d'Alvimar. I know that the Spaniards have many names; but if he will tell me simply that lady's real name, her family name——"
"If you know it," retorted D'Alvimar, "your persistence in making me tell it is an additional insult."
"Oh! do not take it so, D'Alvimar," cried Guillaume testily. "Give her your own name, unless you propose that we shall pass the night here!"
"Nay, cousin," said the marquis; "I myself will supply this mysterious name. Monsieur de Villareal's alleged sister was called Julie de Sandoval."
"Well, why not, monsieur?" said D'Alvimar, seizing eagerly upon what he believed to be a monstrous blunder on the old man's part. "I did not wish to mention that name. It was not becoming in me to reveal it, and I thought that you did not know it. Since you yourself, by asserting that to be the fact, have been guilty of one of those falsehoods which you rebuke so sharply in others, let me tell you, monsieur, that Julie de Sandoval was my mother's daughter, by her first husband."
"In that case, monsieur," replied Bois-Doré uncovering, "I am ready to withdraw, and to apologize for my violence, if you will swear to me on your honor that you recognized your half-sister, Julie de Sandoval, under her veil, at the tavern of——"
"I swear it to satisfy you. Indeed, I saw her without her veil in that tavern."
"For the third time—pardon my persistence, I owe it to my brother's memory—for the third time, it was really your sister, Julie de Sandoval? The ring which she wore on her finger and is now on mine, and which bears that name in full, can have belonged to no other than her? You swear it?"