She stopped him quickly, blushing. “You know he was Drimdarroch, Count Victor,” said she, with some conviction.
He jumped to his feet and bent to stare at her, his face all wrought with astonishment.
“Mon Dieu! Mademoiselle, you do not say the two were one? And yet—and yet—yes, par dieu! how blind I have been; there is every possibility.”
“I thought you knew it,” said Olivia, much relieved, “and felt anything but pleased at your seeming readiness in the circumstances to let me be the victim of my ignorance. I had too much trust in the wretch.”
“Women distrust men too much in the general and too little in particular. And you knew?” asked Count Victor. .
“I learned to-day,” said Olivia, “and this was my bitter schooling.”
She passed him the letter. He took it and read aloud:
“I have learned now,” said the writer, “the reason for your black looks at Monsher the wine merchant that has a Nobleman's Crest upon his belongings. It is because he has come to look for Drimdarroch. And the stupid body cannot find him! We know who Drimdarroch is, do we not, Sim? Monsher may have sharp eyes, but they do not see much further than a woman's face if the same comes in his way. And Simon MacTaggart (they're telling me) has been paying late visits to Doom Castle that were not for the love of Miss Milk-and-Water. Sim! Sim! I gave you credit for being less o' a Gomeral. To fetch the Frenchman to my house of all places! You might be sure he would not be long among our Indwellers here without his true business being discovered. Drimdarroch, indeed! Now I will hate the name, though I looked with a difference on it when I wrote it scores of times to your direction in the Rue Dauphine of Paris, and loved to dwell upon a picture of the place there that I had never seen, because my Sim (just fancy it!) was there. You were just a Wee Soon with the title, my dear Traitour, my bonny Spy. It might have been yours indeed, and more if you had patience, yes perhaps and Doom forby, as that is like to be my good-man's very speedily. What if I make trouble, Sim, and open the eyes of Monsher and the mim-mou'ed Madame at the same moment by telling them who is really Drimdarroch? Will it no' gar them Grue, think ye?”
Count Victor stood amazed when he had read this. A confusion of feelings were in his breast. He had blundered blindly into his long-studied reprisals whose inadequate execution he was now scarce willing to regret, and Olivia had thought him capable of throwing her to this colossal rogue! The document shook in his hand.
“Well?” said Olivia at last. “Is it a much blacker man that is there than the one you thought? I can tell you I will count it a disgrace to my father's daughter that she ever looked twice the road he was on.”