ded! I had thought you would have died
sooner."

"I had no choice but to yield, Raoul. Or at least but the choice of
that old man's hand, or an eternal dungeon. The _lettres de cachet_
were signed, and you dead, and on the conditions I extorted from the
marquis, I became in name, Raoul, only in name, by all my hopes of
Heaven! the wife of the man whom you pronounce, wherefore, I cannot
dream, the basest of mankind. Now tell me."

"And did it never strike you as being wonderful and most unnatural
that this Ploermel, who is neither absolutely a dotard nor an old
woman, should accept your hand upon this condition?"

"I was too happy to succeed in extorting it to think much of that,"
she answered.

"_Extorted!_" replied Raoul bitterly, "And how, I pray you, is this
condition which you extorted ratified or made valid?"

"It is signed by himself, and witnessed by my own father, that, being
I regard myself the wife of the dead, he shall ask no more of
familiarity from me than if I were the bride of heaven!"

"The double villains!"

"But wherefore villains, Raoul?" exclaimed Melanie.

"I tell you, girl, it is a compact--a base, hellish compact--with the
foul despot, the disgrace of kings, the opprobrium of France, who sits
upon the throne, dishonoring it daily! A compact such as yet was never
entered into by a father and a husband, even of the lowest of mankind!
A compact to deliver you a spotless virgin-victim to the vile-hearted
and luxurious tyrant. Curses! a thousand curses on his soul! and on my
own soul! who have fought and bled for him, and all to meet with this,
as my reward of service!"

"Great God! can these things be," she exclaimed, almost fainting with
horror and disgust. "Can these things indeed be? But speak, Raoul,
speak; how can you know all this?"

"I tell you, Melanie, it is the talk, the very daily, hourly gossip of
the streets, the alleys, nay, even the very kennels of Paris. Every
one knows it--every one believes it, from the monarch in the Louvre to
the lowest butcher of the Faubourg St. Antoine!

"And they believe it--of me, of _me_, they believe this infamy!"

"With this addition, if any addition were needed, that you are not a
deceived victim, but a willing and proud participator in the shame."

"I will--that is--" she corrected herself, speaking very rapidly and
energetically--"I _would_ die sooner. But there is no need now to die.
You have come back to me, and all will yet go well wit