"You know!"
"I know, Madame," I replied, with vigour, "that to please this
love-sick girl you have placed me in a position of the utmost
difficulty; that you have jeopardised the confidence which my
master, whom I have never willingly deceived, places in me; and
that out of all this I see only one way of escape, and that is by
a full and frank confession, which you must make to the Queen."
"Oh, Monsieur," she said faintly.
"The girl, of course, must be immediately given up."
My wife began to sob at that, as women will; but I had too keen a
sense of the difficulties into which she had plunged me by her
deceit, to pity her over much. And, doubtless, I should have
continued in the resolution I had formed, and which appeared to
hold out the only hope of avoiding the malice of those enemies
whom every man in power possesses--and none can afford to
despise--if La Trape's words, when he betrayed the secret to me,
had not recurred to my mind and suggested other reflections.
Doubtless, Mademoiselle had been watched into my house, and my
ill-wishers would take the earliest opportunity of bringing the
lie home to me.
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