"You?" Her eyes grew wide and her lips parted.
"I!" a set defiance in his tone.
"It is you who have done this thing?"
"Yes. I am the guilty man. I did the work well, considering the difficulties. The list was the main obstacle, but I overcame that. I represented myself as secretary to her Highness, which, when all is said, was the very thing agreed upon in Venice. I am the guilty man;" but he spoke like a man who was enjoying a triumph.
"And you have the effrontery to confess your crime to me?" her fury blazing forth.
"Call it what you please, the fact remains."
"What purpose had you in mind when you did this cowardly thing? And I had trusted you and treated you as an equal! And so it was you who perpetrated this forgery, this miserable jest?"
"Forgery, yes; jest, no." Her anger did not alarm him; he had gone too far to be alarmed at anything.
"Why did you do it?"
"I did it as a man who has but a single throw left. One chance in a thousand; I took that chance and won."