turned on her, seeming to read to the bottom of her soul.

"Madame," he said with cold and piercing solemnity, "you know not the
extent of the danger that threatens you. I need say nothing of the
indisputable authenticity of the evidence nor of the fulness of proof
which testifies to the identity of Comte Chabert. I am not, as you
know, the man to take up a bad cause. If you resist our proceedings to
show that the certificate of death was false, you will lose that first
case, and that matter once settled, we shall gain every point."

"What, then, do you wish to discuss with me?"

"Neither the Colonel nor yourself. Nor need I allude to the briefs
which clever advocates may draw up when armed with the curious facts
of this case, or the advantage they may derive from the letters you
received from your first husband before your marriage to your second."

"It is false," she cried, with the violence of a spoilt woman. "I
never had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if some one is pretending
to be the Colonel, it is some swindler, some returned convict, like
Coignard perhaps. It makes me shudder only to think of it. Can the
Colonel rise from the dead, monsieur? Bonaparte sent an aide-de-camp
to inquire for me on his death, and to this day I draw the pension of
three thousand francs granted to this widow by the Government. I have
been perfectly in the right to turn away all the Chaberts who have
ever come, as I shall all who may come."

"Happily we are alone, madame. We can tell lies at our ease," said he
coolly, and finding it amusing to lash up the Countess' rage so as to
lead her to betray herself, by tactics familiar to lawyers, who are