‘You should have known your sister better than that,’ he said, ‘but from what I heard of you and from what I have learned now I am afraid that you know no one save yourself. It was you who ruined our marriage, Emilie Riguad. I believe Alice loved me as I loved her, but her love was not greater than her fear of you. You frightened her, and she was too frightened after she married me to write and tell you that we were man and wife. When I suggested it, she grew quite hysterical, telling me that you would be angry, that no one must know, not even your cousins down at the quay. And so we kept it a secret but gradually I found that the poison you had instilled into my wife had gone too deep for me to save her from her own fear and her own misery. You had poisoned her by instilling in her a hatred of men such as you yourself had for every man with whom you came in contact, and she had grown to believe what you had taught her, that all men are evil and bestial.

‘Nothing I could say, nothing I could do, would change her. She shrank from me. Her love for me turned to hatred – a hatred that you had taught her from her very childhood. That was what you had done and that was why she left me, turning away from love and happiness, flying back to you and your hate, which was stronger than anything I could offer. It was you who smashed our marriage, Emilie Riguad, and it was you who killed your sister, not I.’

Emilie gave a strange cry.

‘It isn’t true,’ she shouted. ‘You lie! You are saying this to justify yourself, to escape the revenge I planned for you. I have planned it all these years and I have succeeded in what I have set out to do. I wanted to ruin your life and the life of your son, and that is what I have managed to do now. You won’t forget this moment, you won’t be able to escape from it. You ruined Alice, you killed her, and her daughter – your child and hers – has been brought up and educated by the money obtained from a – ’

‘Be silent!’

The Duke’s voice, clear and authoritative, broke across the ugly word. Even as he spoke something strange happened to Emilie. She seemed to choke, a terrible expression crossed her features, torturing and twisting her face. She put out her hands as if she would grasp something for support, and then, before anyone could reach her, she pitched forward on the floor.

15