ea of some
unaccountable mystery than believe in the truth of that at which her
inmost heart revolted.

She was thinking that she would get Olivier to repeat once more all the
events of that ill-omened night and worm her way as much as possible
into any secret there might be which remained sealed to the judges,
since for their purposes it did not seem worth while to give themselves
any further trouble about the matter.

On arriving at the Conciergerie, De Scuderi was led into a large light
apartment. She had not long to wait before she heard the rattle of
chains. Olivier Brusson was brought in. But the moment he appeared in
the doorway De Scuderi sank on the floor fainting. When she recovered,
Olivier had disappeared. She demanded impetuously that she should be
taken to her carriage; she would go--go at once, that very moment, from
the apartments of wickedness and infamy. For oh! at the very first
glance she had recognised in Olivier Brusson the young man who had
thrown the note into the carriage on the Pont Neuf, and who had brought
her the casket and the jewels. Now all doubts were at an end; La
Regnie's horrible suspicion was fully confirmed. Olivier Brusson
belonged to the atrocious band of assassins; undoubtedly he murdered
his master. And Madelon? Never before had Mademoiselle been so bitterly
deceived by the deepest promptings of her heart; and now, shaken to the
very depths of her soul by the discovery of a power of evil on earth in
the existence of which she had not hitherto believed, she began to
despair of all truth. She allowed the hideous suspicion to enter her
mind that Madelon was involved in the complot, and might have had a
hand in the infamous deed of blood. As is frequently the case with the
human mind, that, once it has laid hold upon an idea, it diligently
seeks for colours, until it finds them, with which to deck out the
picture in tints ever more vivid and ever more glaring; so also De
Scuderi, on reflecting again upon all the circumstances of the deed, as
well as upon the minutest features in Madelon's behaviour, found many
things to strengthen her suspicion. And many points which hitherto she
had regarded as a proof of innocence and purity now presented
themselves as undeniable tokens of abominable wickedness and studied
hypocrisy. Madelon's heartrending expressions of trouble, and her
floods of piteous tears, might very well have been forced from her, not
so much from fear of seeing her lover