'It is the outline of it all,' he answered. 'If you care to know more of the causes which drove her from her home——'
'They do not interest me in the least.'
Her voice was as chill as frost.
'Then allow me to apologise for having intruded even so much as this on your attention.'
He bowed before her, and was about to leave the room; but she, without rising a hair's breadth from the languid attitude in which she reclined, said, 'Wait.'
He waited, in sanguine expectation of an impulse of sympathy in which those more generous instincts, those kinder emotions which sometimes swayed her, would be aroused on behalf of a life she had thoughtlessly injured.
Still without rising she stretched out her arm, and took up a blotting-book from her writing-cabinet, which stood near. In the blotting-case was a tiny note-book of ivory and silver; she opened it, and read from it in a serene voice certain dates.
'Before you give your idyl to Halévy—or to the journalists in general—let me renew your memory with these memoranda,' she said in the same soft cold voice. 'Your narrative, as you tell it, is bald and wanting, as you admit, in detail. I will supply some of those details. On June 10 you brought Damaris Bérarde to this house, where she remained ill for many days, even weeks. On July 20 you went yourself to visit her cousin, the present proprietor of the island of Bonaventure, and endeavoured to negotiate through bankers of Aix the purchase of the island, which, however, the owner refused to sell. On August 2 you had her taken, accompanied by her gardes-malades, to the farm of the Croix Blanche, which lies between the villages of Les Hameaux and Magny. On August 15 you visited Les Hameaux. In the last week of July, many objects of artistic interest and value had been already sent by you to the farmhouse. In the same week, rentes to the amount of a hundred thousand francs, were purchased on the Bourse in the name of Damaris Bérarde. There are many more dates than these in my note-book, but those are enough to supply the lacunæ in your story. On peut broder dessus without any great imagination. A knowledge of human nature will suffice. You will do me the favour never to re-open the subject; and as a matter of good taste, to endeavour that your idyl shall not be too largely talked about for the amusement of the world in general.'
Then she slid the little note-book within the leaves of blotting-paper, and fastened the rose in the lace at her breast.
It was impossible for him to misunderstand her meaning.