very next second proved my
disillusionment. Sarah spoke to me!

She spoke to me and laughed! Ah, she was happy, Sir! Happy in that she
had completely and irrevocably tricked me! That traitor Fernand Rochez
was up to the neck in the plot which had saddled me for ever with an
ugly, elderly wife of dour mien and no fortune, while he and the
lovely Leah were spinning the threads of perfect love at the other end
of Paris and laughing their fill at my discomfiture. Think, Sir, what
I suffered during those few brief minutes while the coach lurched
through the narrow streets of Suresnes, and I had perforce to listen
to the protestations of undying love from this unprepossessing female!

That love, she vowed, was her excuse, and everything, she asserted,
was fair in love and war. She knew that after Rochez had attained his
heart's desire and carried off the lady of his choice--which he had
successfully done half an hour before I myself made my way up the
Passage Corneille--I would pass out of her life for ever. This she
could not endure. Life at once would become intolerable. And, aided
and abetted by Rochez and Leah, she had planned and contrived my
mystification and won me by foul means, since she could not do so by
fair; and it seemed as if her volubility then was the forecast of what
my life with her would be in the future. Talk! Talk! Talk! She never
ceased!

She told me the whole story of the abominable conspiracy against my
liberty. Her brother, M. Goldberg, she explained, had determined upon
remarriage. She, Sarah, felt that henceforth she would be in the way
of everybody; she would have no home. Leah married to Rochez; a new
and young Mme. Goldberg ruling in the old house of the Rue des
Medecins! Ah, it was unthinkable!

And I, Sir--I, Hector Ratichon--had, it appears, by my polite manners
and prepossessing ways, induced this dour old maid to believe that she
was not altogether indifferent to me. Ah, how I cursed my own charms,
when I realised whither they had led me! It seems that it was that
fickle jade Leah who first imagined the whole execrable plot. Rochez
was to entrust me with the task of carrying off his beloved, and thus
I would be tricked in the darkness into abducting Mlle. Goldberg
senior from her home. Then some friends of Rochez arranged to play the
comedy of false gendarmes, and again I was tricked into acknowledging
Sarah as my affianced wife before independent witnesses. After that I
could no long