expect it."

"Come, come, you are offended with me."

She gave him a glance of mingled disdain and resentment; but he went on,
in a timid, wistful tone--

"I know that my conduct must have seemed strange to you, and I
acknowledge that nothing can justify a man for suddenly leaving the woman
he loves--I do not dare to say the woman who loves him--without a word of
explanation. But, dear Angelique, I was jealous."

"Jealous!" she repeated incredulously.

"I tried my best to overcome the feeling, and I hid my suspicions from
you. Twenty times I came to see you bursting with anger and determined
to overwhelm you with reproaches, but at the sight of your beauty I
forgot everything but that I loved you. My suspicions dissolved before a
smile; one word from your lips charmed me into happiness. But when I was
again alone my terrors revived, I saw my rivals at your feet, and rage
possessed me once more. Ah! you never knew how devotedly I loved you."

She let him speak without interruption; perhaps the same thought was in
her mind as in Quennebert's, who, himself a past master in the art of
lying; was thinking--

"The man does not believe a word of what he is saying."

But the treasurer went on--