"'Are you not Mademoiselle de Renzie's lover?' was the next enquiry. 'I
admire her, as do thousands of others, who also respect her as I do,'
your friend returned very prettily. At last, dearest lady, you begin to
see what there is in this string of questions and answers to bring me
straight to you?"
"No, Count Godensky, I do not," I answered steadily. But a sudden
illuminating ray did show me, even as I spoke, what _might_ be in his
scheming mind.
"Then I must be clear, and, above all, frank. Du Laurier loves you. You
love him. You mean, I think, to marry him. But deeply in love as he is,
he is a very proud fellow. He will have all or nothing, if I judge him
well; and he would not take for his wife a woman who accepts diamonds
from another man, saying as she takes them that he is her lover."
"He wouldn't believe it of me!" I cried.
"There is a way of convincing him. Oh, _I_ shall not tell him! But he
shall see in writing all that passed between the Juge d'Instruction and
Mr. Dundas, unless--"
"Unless?--but I know what you mean to threaten. You repeat yourself."
"Not quite, for I have new arguments, and stronger ones.
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