'Prince Vàsàrhely is a man of honour. He would disown you if he knew that you offer yourself with the shamelessness of a déclassée, and that you outrage a noble and unsuspecting woman, by forcing yourself into her home when you have failed in tempting her husband to offer her the last dishonour.'
Her face paled under the unveiled and unsparing insults, but she did not lose her equanimity.
'We are very like a scene of Sardou's,' she said, with her unchangeable smile. 'You would have made your fortune on the boards of the Français. Why did you not go there instead of calling yourself Marquis de Sabran? It would have been wiser.'
He felt as if a knife had been plunged through his loins; all the colour left his face. Had Vàsàrhely told her? No! it was impossible. They were mere chance words of a woman eager to insult, not knowing what she said. He affected not to hear, and with a bow to her he moved once more to leave the chamber. But her voice again arrested him.
'Tell me one thing before you go,' she said, very gently. 'Does Wanda know that you are Vassia Kazán?'
She spoke with perfect moderation and simplicity, not altering her posture as she lay back in her tapestried chair, but she watched him with trepidation. She was not altogether sure of facts she had half-guessed, half-gathered. She had pieced details together with infinite skill, but she could not be absolutely certain of her conclusions. She watched him with eager avidity beneath her smiling calmness. If he showed no consciousness her cast was wrong; she would miss her vengeance; she would remain in his power. But at a glance she saw her shaft had pierced straight home. He had strong control and even strong power of dissimulation in need; but that name thrown at him stunned him as a stone might have done. His face grew livid, he stood motionless, he had no falsehood ready, he was taken off his guard: all he realised was that his ruin was in the grasp of his mortal foe. His hold on her was lost. His authority, his strength, his dignity, all fell before those two hateful words, 'Vassia Kazán!'
'He has told her!' he thought, and the blood surged in his brain and made him dazed and giddy. He had not told her. By private investigation, by keen wit, by careful and cruel comparison of various information, she had arrived at the conclusion that Vassia Kazán and he who had come from Mexico as the grandson of the Marquis Xavier de Sabran were one and the same. Certain she could not be, but she was near enough to certainty to dare to cast her stone at a venture. If it missed—she was a woman. He could not kill or harm a woman, or call her to account.
Even now, if he had preserved his composure and turned on her with a calm challenge, she would have been powerless.
But he had lost the habit of falsehood; self-consciousness made him weak; he believed that Egon Vàsàrhely had betrayed him. His lips were mute, his tongue seemed to cleave to his mouth. A less keen-sighted woman would have read confession on his face. She was satisfied.
'You have not answered my question,' she said quietly. 'Does Wanda know it? Does such a saintly woman "compound a felony"? I believe a false name is a sort of felony, is it not?'