"You know not where she is?" gasped he, faintly.
"No," cried she, "no! You look as though you were yourself astounded, Prince Eugene; but you will no longer deny your guilt when I tell you that my poor innocent child has told me all."
"What—all?" asked Eugene.
"She told me that you were lovers. And now, prevaricate no longer; it is useless and renders you still more infamous."
"What more did she say?" asked Eugene, unconscious that his tone was as imperative as that of an emperor.
"Nothing more. She merely told me that in two days I should learn all. Alas! I have learned it to my cost, and to her ruin!"
"And you accuse me of enticing her! Great God! if my heart were not breaking with anguish, it would break that such baseness could be attributed to me. Would that I could answer you, duchess, but God in heaven knows that I was ignorant of her departure, until I learned it from yourself!"
"Was ever a man so bold in falsehood!" cried the duchess, losing all command of her temper. "I have in your own handwriting the proof of your wickedness. Now mark me! This morning, the second woman in waiting of the marchioness came frightened to my apartments to tell me that her mistress, her woman Louise, and George, had disappeared from the pavilion, no one could surmise when. I was so overcome with terror that I hurried to the pavilion, and alas! found that it was indeed so. Neither her own bed, nor that of the servant who accompanied her, had been occupied. I looked everywhere for some clew to the mystery, when, on the floor near her morning-dress, which hung on a chair, I found this scrap of paper, which, as it is signed with your initials, you will not deny, I presume."
With eyes that flashed fire, she almost dashed the paper in his face. Eugene took it, and, having given it one glance, he turned pale as death, and it fluttered from his palsied hands to the floor.
"Heavens, what can ail him!" cried the duchess, sympathizing, in spite of herself, with his sudden sorrow. He was ghastly as a spectre, and his whole frame shook like the leaf of an aspen.