An Ingenious Idea and a Woman's Wit

"Either you understand nothing about women, or you are guilty of gross
fatuity."

"I understand woman tolerably well, and I have rubbed against too many
edges to be fatuous."

"Indeed, I believe you have much to learn."

"If I showed this paper to the governor of Quebec . . ."

"Which you will not do, there being no magic liquid this side of
France."

"It would be simple to cut out the name."

"You would still have to explain to Monsieur de Lauson how you came
into possession of it."

"Madame, the more I listen to you, the more determined I am that you
shall become my wife. I admire the versatility of your mind, the
coolness of your logic. Not one woman in a thousand could talk to so
much effect, when imprisonment or death . . ."

"Or marriage!"

". . . faced her as surely as it faces you."

"Permit me to see the paper, Monsieur."

Some men would have surrendered to the seductiveness of her voice; not
so the vicomte.

"Scarcely, Madame," smiling.

"How am I to know that it is genuine? Allow me to glance at it?"

"And witness you tear it up, or . . . burn it like a love-letter?"
shrewdly.

Madame stiffened in her chair.

"Have you ever burned a love-letter, Madame?" asked the vicomte.

Madame turned pale from rage and shame. The rage nearly overcame the
fear and terror which she was so admirably concealing.

"Have you?" pitilessly.

"You . . . ?"

"Yes," intuitively. He touched the particles of burnt paper and
laughed.

"You were in this room?"