"You call it
nothing to unearth a falsehood where you awaited truth, treachery where
honesty should be, deceit instead of candor! You call it nothing to
harbor a knight and discover him a knave, to give your trust
unfalteringly and find that it has reposed on lies! Nothing to be
jockied of your love, cozened of your faith! To wage a war with
blacklegs and mistake that war for peace! Do you call it nothing to
drown a soul, to make it a sponge of shadows that can no longer receive
the light? Is it nothing to hold out your arms and be embraced by Judas?
Is it nothing to be loyal and be gammoned for your innocence? Is it
nothing to be juggled with, to be gulled, cheated, and decoyed? Is it
nothing to grasp a hawser and find it a rope of sand? To pursue the real
and watch it turn into delusion? Nothing to see the promise vanish in
the hope? Is it nothing to take a mirage for a landscape, nothing to be
hoodwinked of your confidence, to see high noon dissolve into obscurest
night, a diamond into pinchbeck? Tell me, is it nothing to have trust,
sincerity, and love for heritage, and wake to find that you have pawned
them to a Jew? Do you think it nothing to be mated to a living perjury,
a felony in flesh and blood? Is this what you call nothing? Is this it?
Then tell me what something is."

For a moment she stared at her father, her lips still moving, her small
hands clenched, then, exhausted by the vehemence of her speech, she sank
back again into the chair which she had vacated.

"No, Eden, not that," her father answered; but he spoke despondently,
with the air of a man battling against a stream, and conscious of the
futility of the effort. "No, not that; you misunderstand. I mean this:
you have confounded suspicion with proof. Whoever this woman is,
Usselex's relations with her may be irreproachable. Mind you, I don't
say they are; I say they may be. I will question him, and he will answer
truthfully."

"Truthfully? You expect him to answer truthfully. In him nothing is
true, not even his lies."

"Eden, I will question him. If it is as you expect, he will tell me and
you will forgive."

"Forgive? yes, it is easy to forgive, but forget, never! Besides, he
will not tell the truth; he will deceive you, as he has deceived me."

"No, Eden," Mr. Menemon answered, "you are wrong." For a moment he
hesitated and glanced at her. "I suppose," he continued, "I may tell you
now. Perhaps it will help to strengthen your confidence."