ck-click_ of the ball inside the wheel again.

"How long will you keep up this pretense, _madame_?" cried Leroux
angrily. "What have you to gain by concealing the knowledge of your
husband from me?"

"M. Leroux, why will you not believe that I remember nothing?" answered
Jacqueline.

"How can you have forgotten? Why did you run away after marrying him?
What were you doing in New York? Who was the man who accompanied you
to the Merrimac?" he shouted.

Through the chink of the door I saw the old man look up in mild protest
at the disturbing sounds. I clenched my fists, and the temptation to
make an end of Leroux was almost too strong for my restraint.

But to Jacqueline the insult conveyed no meaning, and Leroux continued
in more moderate tones.

"Come, _madame_, why do you not play fair with me?" he asked. "Who is
that man Hewlett, and why did he accompany you so far toward your
_chateau_? Before God, I know your husband and he have been plotting
with Tom Carson against me, but why he should thus place himself in my
power I cannot understand."

"Ah, you have spoken of a Tom Carson many times," said Jacqueline.
"Soon, _monsieur_, I shall begin to believe that such a person really
exists."

"Tell me where you met Hewlett."

"I tell you for the last time, _monsieur_, that I do not remember. But
what I do remember I shall tell you. After my father had turned M.
Louis d'Epernay out of his home, whither he had come to beg money to
pay his gambling debts, you brought him back. You made my father take
him in. He wanted to marry me. But I refused, because I had no love
for him. But you insisted I should marry him, because he had gained
you the entrance to the seigniory and helped you to acquire your power
over my father. Oh, yes, _monsieur_, let us be frank with each other,
as you have expressed the desire to be."

"Go on," growled Leroux, biting his lips. "Perhaps I shall learn
something."

"Nothing that you do not already know, _monsieur_," she flashed out
with spirit. "My father came here, long ago, a political fugitive, in
danger of death. You knew this, and you played upon his fears. You
brought your friends and encouraged him to gamble and waste his money
in his old age, when his mind had become enfeebled.

"Yes, you played on the old gambling instinct which had laid dormant in
him for forty years. You made him think he was acting the _grand
seigneur_, as his father had done in earlier days