"No, no; this is monstrous!"
"You killed Baron d'Hautrec, mademoiselle. You entered his service under the name of Antoinette Bréhat, with the intention of robbing him of the blue diamond, and you killed him."
Again she murmured, breaking down and reduced to entreaties:
"Hush, monsieur, I beg.... As you know so much, you must also know that I did not murder the baron."
"I did not say that you murdered him, mademoiselle. Baron d'Hautrec was subject to fits of insanity which only Sœur Auguste was able to check. She has told me this herself. He must have thrown himself upon you in her absence; and it was in the course of the ensuing struggle that you struck at him, in self-defence. Appalled by what you had done, you rang the bell and fled, without even taking from his finger the blue diamond which you had come to secure. A moment later, you returned with one of Lupin's accomplices, a man-servant in the next house, lifted the baron on to his bed and arranged the room ... but still without daring to take the blue diamond. That's what happened. Therefore, I repeat, you did not murder the baron. And yet it was your hands that killed him."
She was holding them clasped before her forehead, her slim, white, delicate hands, and she kept them long like that, motionless. Then, uncrossing her fingers, she showed her sorrow-stricken face and said:
"And you mean to tell all this to my father?"
"Yes; and I shall tell him that I have as witnesses Mlle. Gerbois, who will recognize the blonde lady, Sœur Auguste, who will recognize Antoinette Bréhat, the Comtesse de Crozon, who will recognize Mme. de Réal. That is what I shall tell him."
"You will not dare!" she said, recovering her presence of mind, in the face of immediate danger.
He rose and took a step toward the library. Clotilde stopped him: