“But she met his gaze unflinchingly, and when he said:
“‘Where are my wife and child?’
“She answered him fearlessly:
“‘I last saw them on the deck of the l’Europe as it put out to sea; if living, they are in that vessel still, and almost to America. It is several days since they sailed.’
“For a moment he could not speak, but stood glancing at her as a wild beast might glance at some creature it meant to annihilate. But she never flinched a hair, and her eyes grew larger and brighter, and her lips more firmly compressed, as she stood regarding him, with a thought of Agatha in her heart. This was her hour of revenge, and when he found voice to say:
“‘Why has she gone, and who helped her to go, and where is Madame Verwest? Tell me what you know,’ she burst forth impetuously, and answered him:
“‘Yes, I will tell you what I know, Ernest Haverleigh, and I am glad, so glad, of this hour of settlement between us. I told you your wife had gone to America, and you ask me why. Strange question to ask about a wife, a mere girl, whom you have kept shut up so long a prisoner in reality, with no freedom whatever. A wife whom you have branded with insanity, when she is far more sane than you, a wife to whom you have told lie after lie, withholding her letters, and making her believe her mother dead and her old home desolate. Ay, Ernest Haverleigh, you may well turn pale, and grasp the chair, and breathe so heavily, and ask me how I know all this. I do know that they across the sea, in the little red house, thought her a lunatic, and mourned for her as such, while she, this side the water, mourned her mother dead and sister gone she knew not where, for you never told her; and you did all this to her, for why, I know not, except the foolish words she spoke in New York when she did not love you. What matter for love then, and she so young? In time it would have come. She meant you fair, and you, you darkened her young life, and made her almost crazy, and she could not love you. Only one did that truly—loved you to her snare and death, but I come not to speak of her yet, or I cannot say to you what I must. Madame Anna would have loved you in time, but you killed the love, and she was so desolate when I went to the chateau to hate her—yes, to hate her, and make merry of her because she was your wife. I did not want to be your wife, remember that; not now, not yet. I like freedom too well, but by and by, when I am older, and the hair is gray, and the rouge and the powder will not cover the wrinkles, I meant to be Madame Haverleigh, and respectable, and go and live in England, and make the strict madames and mademoiselles think much of me; but this little pale American came between, and I meant to hate her, but could not, for the sweetness and helplessness in the blue eyes and the—oh, mon Dieu, the look of the dead darling in her face. So I liked her much, and pitied her more, and then—oh, woe is me!—then I found at last my darling’s grave—found it there at that dreary place. Agatha, my sister, whom you ruined and drove mad, really mad, and killed, you villain! Oh, you villain! how I hate you, and how I would tear your heart out and break it as you broke hers, only I want you to live and hear me out, you villain!’
“Here Eugenie stopped to breathe, for she had wrought herself up to such a pitch of frenzy that she seemed in danger of apoplexy, and clutched at the fastenings of her dress about her throat as if to loosen them. Haverleigh saw the strange look in her face, and how she gasped for breath, but was himself too much paralyzed to move. At the mention of Agatha, the sweet rose from Normandy, whom he had almost loved, and whose memory was still green in his heart, he had thrown up both his hands and then sank into the chair, unable to stand any longer. That Agatha Wynde should have been the sister of Eugenie stunned him completely, and made him for a time forget even Anna and his child. At last, as the color faded from Eugenie’s face and she breathed more freely, he found voice to say:
“‘Agatha your sister, yours! I never dreamed of that.’
“‘No, of course not, but you knew she was somebody’s darling, the white-haired old man’s who died with a curse of you on his lips. You lured the simple peasant-girl away, and told her you meant fair, and because she was pure, and innocent, and could not otherwise be won, you made believe marry her; but it was no marriage, no priest, and when she found it out she went raving mad and died.’