"She dared to put it so to you!" The sad grey eyes darkened with wrathful scorn. "Did she wish to enlist you as her champion?"
"Is it surprising that she was angry?" he answered defiantly. "If it be true——"
"It is true and she knows it," broke in Miss Chressham. "She hath good cause to know it. Selina wrote to my lord, and she—this woman—stole her letter and composed, from that and what she further knew or imagined, this paragraph in the Gazette."
"The Countess!" cried Marius. "The Countess—that paragraph! Susannah, I do not believe it!"
Miss Chressham answered with weary passion.
"Believe it or no, it is true, true—and it was an action of a meanness, a vulgarity——"
"I do not credit it," he interrupted vehemently. "After what she said to me."
Susannah gave him a swift look.
"She had no right to speak to you."
The dusky blood flooded his agitated, handsome face.