character as a liar, a slanderer and a traitor. I loved a man who was
brave, honourable, faithful--reckless, perhaps, and wild as such men
are--but devoted and true. You came between us. You told me that he was
false, cowardly, an adventurer of the worst kind. Because I would not
believe you, and would have married him in spite of you, you killed him.
Was it cowardly of him to face the first swordsman in Europe? They told
me that he was not afraid of you, the men who saw it, and that he fought
you like a lion, as he was. And the provocation, too! He never struck
me. He was showing me what he meant by a term in fencing--the silver
knife he held grazed my cheek because I was startled and moved. But you
meant to kill him, and you chose to say that he had struck me. Did you
ever hear a harsh word from his lips during those months of waiting?
When you had done your work you fled--like the murderer you were and
are. But I escaped from the woman who says she is my mother--and is--and
I went to him and found him living and married him. You used to tell me
that he was an adventurer and little better than a beggar. Yet he left
me a large fortune. It is as well that he provided for me, since you
have succeeded in losing most of your own money at play--doubtless to
insure my not profiting by it at your death. Not that you will die--men
of your kind outlive their victims, because they kill them.

"And now, when you saw--for you did see it--when you saw and knew that
Orsino Saracinesca and I loved each other, you have broken my life a
second time. You might so easily have gone to him, or have come to me,
at the first, with the truth. You know that I should never forgive you
for what you had done already. A little more could have made matters no
worse then. You knew that Don Orsino would have thanked you as a friend
for the warning. Instead--I refuse to believe you in your dotage after
all--you make that woman spy upon me until the great moment is come, you
give her the weapons and you bid her strike when the blow will be most
excruciating. You are not a man. You are Satan. I parted twice from the
man I love. He would not let me go, and he came back and tried to keep
me--I do not know how I escaped. God helped me. He is so brave and noble
that if he had held those accursed papers in his hands and known all the
truth he would not have given me up. He would have brought a stain on
his great name, and shame upon his great house for my sake