"Yes?" he said, inquiringly.
"It is this: you will leave me alone with your wife while I reveal to her her name and true identity. It will be best thus. The secret will then be her own, and it will be optional with her whether she should reveal it to you or not."
He bowed affirmatively.
"I have no objection to your plan, madame, and small curiosity over your secret. Whatever you may reveal to Una, it will in nowise lessen my regard for my wife."
He went out and left them together.
Mme. Lorraine turned her vindictive eyes upon Una hissing fiercely:
"Do you not know that you are very foolish in this matter? Would I have treated you as I did for fifteen years, if you had not been—"
"What?" asked Una, impatiently, as she paused significantly, and regarded her with angry, scornful eyes.
Bending forward until her writhing lips almost touched the small, pink ear of the girl, Mme. Lorraine finished her broken sentence in a hissing voice like that of a serpent.
It was as if Mme. Lorraine had struck the girl upon the face. She reeled backward with a low, gasping, terrified cry, and sunk to the floor.