“Ah, my dear friend,” replied the other, “this is a meeting very fortunate for me, for it enables me to say something which I have long wanted to say.”
“I have no wish to hear you. I only demand the reason you are here—a guest in the Minister’s house.”
“You surely know,” he laughed airily. “Am I not to marry Mademoiselle Marie?”
“You have schemed to do so, I know.”
“Well, well,” he remarked philosophically, “we are both schemers—are we not, my dear George? In scheming, however, so very little is certain. But in this world one thing is certain—namely, that Mademoiselle Marie will become Comtesse Dubard at three o’clock on the day after to-morrow.”
The two men were standing quite close to each other, and in that grey light could readily watch the expression of each other’s faces.
“It is your intention, no doubt,” answered Macbean. “But during the month I have been in Rome I have not been idle. I have learned how Angelo Borselli still holds you in the hollow of his hand, and how cleverly he has made you his cat’s-paw to ruin and disgrace Morini. Listen, and if I speak an untruth deny it. Ever since the Sazarac affair you and Borselli have actively conspired against Camillo Morini. The Under-Secretary, with your assistance, had arranged a political coup, but in order to compel Miss Mary to give her consent to this scandalous marriage, you have induced Borselli to stay his hand. You are forcing her to marry you, in order to save her father from ruin and probably from suicide, well knowing, however, what Borselli’s intentions are, as soon as she is your wife and you have obtained her dot! You intend—”
“Look here, hound! Did you ask me to come here to insult me?” cried the Frenchman in fury, advancing a pace in a threatening manner.
“You have said you have something to say to me,” was his response. “But before you say it, I wish to make plain what are my intentions.”
“And what are they, pray?”