Geneviève shook her head:
"Monsieur, believe me, if our engagement had been broken off for an ordinary reason, I should not have allowed Hortense to trouble you. But it is something quite different, I am absolutely convinced. There's a mystery in Jean Louis' life, or rather an endless number of mysteries which hamper and pursue him. I never saw such distress in a human face; and, from the first moment of our meeting, I was conscious in him of a grief and melancholy which have always persisted, even at times when he was giving himself to our love with the greatest confidence."
"But your impression must have been confirmed by minor details, by things which happened to strike you as peculiar?"
"I don't quite know what to say."
"These two names, for instance?"
"Yes, there was certainly that."
"By what name did he introduce himself to you?"
"Jean Louis d'Imbleval."
"But Jean Louis Vaurois?"
"That's what my father calls him."