She shook her head. “No; not poor Captain Martindale. He was tiresome, and, perhaps, something worse. But women had spoilt him and made him what I knew him.”
“Alexia,” he urged, in the ardor of his new relationship. “Tell me. I hate to think that you have suffered at a man’s hands; I must know.”
“It is not worth while,” she replied, with a little reminiscent shudder. “It is nothing more than the persecution of a man who had more determination than chivalry. But he is dead.”
“Lately dead?”
“No; some years ago.”
“Tell me his name.”
“You would know it. He was a distinguished member of your profession.” She paused, as though debating with herself whether she should tell more.
“Did you ever know,” she asked at length, “did you ever know Paul Gastineau?”
Simultaneously with the pronouncing of the name, by a curious, but not uncommon prescience, the image of Gastineau had started up in Herriard’s mind, and he had known intuitively that no other name would be spoken.
Paul Gastineau! He! That he of all men should have been in love with her. And he had persecuted her, evidently with such determination as to leave a very bitter memory, enough to compel a shudder when it came to her mind. It was all plain now. Gastineau’s spite was still keenly alive; love had turned to hate. It was hate. Herriard knew it now, that had gleamed in Gastineau’s eyes when they had spoken of Alexia. In the same instant a great feeling of relief, of joy almost, came to Herriard in the knowledge that the other man’s judgment of the case had been wilfully false. Not another doubt of Alexia’s innocence could ever cross his mind now that he had found the opinion of the acuter brain was warped and worthless, a mere slander.