g back a
little, she darted at Daniel a look of burning hatred.

"Oh!" she murmured, "oh!" finding, apparently, no words to express all
she felt.

Was she going away? It looked as if she thought of it, for she walked
to the door; but, suddenly changing her mind, she came back to where she
had stood, facing Daniel.

"This is the first time in my life," she said, trembling with rage,
"that I condescend to justify myself against such infamous charges; and
you abuse my patience by heaping insult after insult upon me. But never
mind. I look upon you as upon Henrietta's husband; and, since I have
commenced, I mean to finish."

Daniel tried to say a few words of apology; but she interrupted him,--

"Well, yes; one night a young man, Charles de Kergrist,--a profligate,
a gambler, crowning his scandalous life with the vilest and meanest
act,--did come and kill himself under my window. The next day a great
outcry arose against me. Three days later the brother of that wretched
madman, a M. Rene de Kergrist, came and held M. Elgin to account. But
do you know what came of these explanations? Charles de Kergrist, it
appears, killed himself after a supper, which he left in a state of
drunkenness. He committed suicide because he had lost his fortune at
Homburg and at Baden; because he had exhausted his last resources;
because his family, ashamed at his disgrace, refused to acknowledge
him any longer. And, if he chose my window for his self-murder, it was
because he wanted to satisfy a petty grievance. Looking upon me as an
heiress, whose fortune would enable him to continue his extravagant
life, he had courted me, and been refused by M. Elgin. Finally, at the
time when the catastrophe occurred, I was sixty miles away from here, in
Tours, staying at the house of one of M. Elgin's friends, M. Palmer, who
deposed"--

And, as Daniel looked at her with an air of utter bewilderment, she
added,--

"Perhaps you will ask me for proofs of what I state. I have none to give
you. But I know a man who can give you what you want, and that man is M.
de Kergrist's brother; for, after those explanations, he has continued
to be our friend, sir, one of our best friends. And he was here
to-night, and you have seen him; for he came and spoke to me while you
were standing by me. M. de Kergrist lives here in Paris; and M. Elgin
will give you his address."

She looked at Daniel with a glance in which pity and contempt were
strangely mixed, and then