ss. I put myself, to a certain extent, absolutely in your power,
sir,--the power of an utter stranger, of whom I am told I have every
thing to fear."

"O miss!" he declared, "believe me"--

But she interrupted him, saying with great solemnity,--

"I think, if you were to deceive me, you would be the meanest and least
of men. I rely upon your honor."

And then in a firm voice she began the account of her life, from that
fatal evening on which her father had said to her,--

"I have resolved, my daughter, to give you a second mother."

The old dealer had taken a seat facing Henrietta, and listened,
fixing his eyes upon her face as if to enter into her thoughts, and to
anticipate her meaning. His face was all aglow with excitement, like the
face of a gambler who is watching the little white ball that is to make
him a rich man or a beggar. It looked almost as if he had foreseen the
terrible communication she was making, and was experiencing a bitter
satisfaction at finding his presentiments confirmed,--

As Henrietta was proceeding, he would murmur now and then,--

"That is so! Yes, of course that had to come next."

And all these people whose abominable intrigues Henrietta was explaining
to him were apparently better known to him than to her, as if he had
frequently been in contact with them, or even lived in their intimacy.
He gave his judgment on each one with amazing assurance, as the occasion
presented itself, saying,--

"Ah! There I recognize Sarah and Mrs. Brian."

Or,--

"Sir Thorn never does otherwise."

Or, again,--

"Yes, that is all over Maxime de Brevan."

And, according to the different phases of the account, he would laugh
bitterly and almost convulsively, or he would break out in imprecations.

"What a trick!" he murmured with an accent of deep horror, "what an
infernal snare!"

At another point he turned deadly pale, and almost trembled on his
chair, as if he were feeling ill, and were about to fall. Henrietta was
telling him at that moment, from Daniel's recital, the circumstances
under which M. de Kergrist had died, and Malgat had disappeared,--that
poor cashier who had left such an immense deficit behind; who had been
condemned to penal servitude; and whose body the police believed to have
found in a wood near Paris. But, as soon as the young girl had finished,
he rose all of a sudden, and cried out in a formidable voice,--

"I have them now, the wretches! this time I have them!"