While she spoke her eyes, resting on Blaise’s mask-like face, held an expression of malicious satisfaction.
“His wife... alive?” repeated Jean dazedly. “Blaise, is she mad? Nesta has been dead years—years.” Then, as he made no answer, she continued rapidly, a faint note of fear vibrating in her voice: “Isn’t it so? Blaise—speak! Quickly, tell her—Nesta has been dead some years!”
“He cannot tell me anything about her which I do not know already, Mees Peterson, seeing that she is my sister and has been living with me ever since her husband’s cruelty drove her from his home.”
“Is it true, Blaise?” whispered Jean.
Belief that some substance of terrible truth lay behind the Italian’s coolly uttered statements was beginning to lay hold of her.
“Blaise, Blaise”—her voice rising a little—“say it isn’t true—tell her it isn’t true.”
He looked at her speechlessly, but the measureless pain in his eyes answered her more fully, more convincingly than any words.
“You see?” broke in Madame de Varigny triumphantly. “He cannot deny it! It was I who told him of her death and I who now tell him that she still lives. Listen to me, mademoiselle, and I will recount you how——”
“No!” interrupted Jean proudly. “Whatever there may be for me to hear, I will hear it from Blaise—not from you.”
She turned again to Tormarin.