the part of eavesdropper."

"You will play that part, or any other that I ask you, if you love me,"
she says, with a touch of imperiousness.

"Do you not see," she goes on, with more gentleness, "that if our lives
are to be passed near each other (I do not say that they are, but you
seem to wish it), you must first of all be convinced of the truth of all
I tell you? If one doubt, one suspicion, remain, you will, in time,
become unable to banish it. It would grow and grow until you were
mastered by it. You believe in what I tell you now; but how long would
you believe after marriage?"

"I want no proof: I only want your word. Nay, I do not even want that. I
will ask you nothing. I swear that I will never ask you anything."

"That is very beautiful; and I am sure that you mean it now. But it
could not last. You are a very proud man; you are _gentilhomme de race_.
It would in time become intolerable to you if you believed that any one
living man had any title to point a finger of scorn at you. You have a
right to know what my relations were with Lord Gervase: it is necessary
for all the peace of our future that you should know everything,--know
that there is nothing more left for you to know. You can only be
convinced of that if you yourself hear what I say to him. Go; and wait
there."

Brandolin hesitates. To listen unseen is a part which seems very
cowardly to him, and yet she is right, no doubt; all the peace of the
future may depend on it. He is ready to pledge himself blindly in the
dark in all ways, but he knows that she, in forbidding him to do so,
speaks the word of wisdom, of foresight, and of truth.

"Go," she repeats. "Men have a thousand ways of proving the truth of
whatever they say; we have none, or next to none. If you refuse me this,
the sole poor evidence that I can produce, I will never be to you
anything that you now wish. Never; that I swear to you."

He hesitates, and looks at her with a long inquiring regard. Then he
bows, and goes.

After all, she is within her rights. She has no other means to show him
with any proof what this man whose name is so odiously entangled with
her own has, or has not, been to her.

The house is still quite silent, and no one is likely to come into those
rooms until much later. Every syllable said in the small library can be
heard in any part of the larger one. He stands in the embrasure of one
of the windows, the velvet curtains making a screen behind him. He se