"If you mean Mademoiselle
Duvarney, she is not there." Then he added solemnly and slowly:
"She is in no fear of your batteries now--she is beyond them. When
she was there, she was not child enough to think that foolish game
with the vanished chaplain was a marriage. Did you think to gull a
lady so beyond the minute's wildness? She is not there," he added
again in a low voice.
"She is dead?" I gasped. "My wife is dead?"
"Enough of that," he answered with cold fierceness. "The lady
saw the folly of it all, before she had done with the world.
You--you, monsieur! It was but the pity of her gentle heart, of
a romantic nature. You--you blundering alien, spy, and seducer!"
With a gasp of anger I struck him in the face, and whipped out
my sword. But the officers near came instantly between us, and I
could see that they thought me gross, ill-mannered, and wild, to
do this thing before the General's tent, and to an envoy.
Doltaire stood still a moment. Then presently wiped a little
blood from his mouth, and said:
"Messieurs, Captain Moray's anger was justified; and for the
blow he will justify that in some happier time--for me. He said
that I had lied, and I proved him wrong. I called him a spy and a
seducer--he sought to shame, he covered with sorrow, one of the
noblest families of New France--and he has yet to prove me wrong.
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