Madelon gave a bewildered sigh. “I know not how that was,” said she, “unless—” a red flush mounted over her whole face. “No, he would not have done that for me,” she said, as if to herself.
A red flush on Dorothy's face seemed to respond to that on Madelon's. “You think he put his knife there to take suspicion from you?” she cried out, quickly.
Madelon shook her head. “I don't know about the knife,” she said, “but I know I stabbed Lot Gordon.”
“He would not have done that,” said Dorothy, with troubled, angry blue eyes on her face. “He would have thought of—others. He never changed the knife, Madelon Hautville!”
“I know nothing about the knife,” repeated Madelon, “but Burr Gordon did not kill his cousin.”
“He was there, and it was his knife,” said Dorothy. There was now a curious indignation in her manner. It was almost as if she preferred to believe her lover guilty of murder rather than unduly solicitous for her rival.
Madelon Hautville turned upon her with a kind of fierce solemnity. “Dorothy Fair,” said she, “look at me!” and the soft, blue-eyed face, full of that gentle unyielding which is the firmest of all, looked up at her from the pillows—“Dorothy Fair, did that man, who's locked up over there in jail in New Salem, for a crime he's innocent of, ever kiss you?”
Madelon's face seemed to wax stiff and white. She looked like one who bared her breast for a mortal hurt as she spoke. Dorothy went pink to the roots of her yellow hair and the frill on her nightgown. She made an angry shamed motion of her head, which might have signified anything.
“And you can believe this thing of him after that!” said Madelon, with a look of despairing scorn. “He has kissed you, Dorothy Fair, and you can think he has committed a murder!”
Dorothy gasped. “They said—” she began again.