"The tragedy took place at a picnic, just before Gabrielle left her school at Amiens. She placed poison in the girl's wine. Ah, it was a terrible revenge!"
"I am innocent!" cried the girl in despair.
"Remember the letter which you wrote to your mother concerning her. You told Lady Heyburn that you hated her. Do you deny writing that letter? Because, if you do, it is still in existence."
"I deny nothing which I have done," she answered. "You have told my father this in order to shield yourself. You have endeavoured, as the coward you are, to prejudice me in his eyes, just as you compelled me to lie to him when you opened his safe and copied certain of his papers!"
"You opened the safe!" he protested. "Why, I found you there myself!"
"Enough!" she exclaimed quite coolly. "I know the dread charge against me. I know too well the impossibility of clearing myself, especially in the face of that letter I wrote to Lady Heyburn; but it was you and she who entrapped me, and who held me in fear because of my inexperience."
"Tell us the truth, the whole truth, darling," urged Murie, standing at her side and taking her hand confidently in his.
"The truth!" she said, in a strange voice as though speaking to herself. "Yes, let me tell you! I know that it will sound extraordinary, yet I swear to you, by the love you bear for me, Walter, that the words I am about to utter are the actual truth."
"I believe you," declared her lover reassuringly.
"Which is more than anyone else will," interposed Flockart with a sneer, but perfectly confident. It was the hour of his triumph. She had defied him, and he therefore intended to ruin her once and for all.