"She calls it a misunderstanding?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Women have their own vocabulary. Listen, my good sir. There is infamy between us. When a wife betrays a man like me--kind, indulgent, trustful, who has worshipped the ground she treads on--it is not a question of misunderstanding. It is infamy. If she had anywhere to lay her head, I would turn her out of doors to-night. But she has not. You, who are her relative, know I married her without a dowry. You alone of her family survive."
It was on the tip of Aristide's impulsive tongue to say that he would be only too willing to shelter her, but prudently he refrained.
"She has broken my heart," continued Bocardon.
Aristide asked for details of the unhappy affair. The large man hesitated for a moment and glanced suspiciously at his companion; but, fascinated by the clear, luminous eyes, he launched with Southern violence into a whirling story. The villain was a traveller in buttons--_buttons!_ To be wronged by a traveller in diamonds might have its compensations--but buttons! Linen buttons, bone buttons, brass buttons, _trouser buttons!_ To be a traveller in the inanity of buttonholes was the only lower degradation. His name was Bondon--he uttered it scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bondon was unthinkable. This Bondon was a regular client of the hotel, and such a client!--who never ordered a bottle of _vin cacheté_ or coffee or cognac. A contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions. Now he was certain. He tossed off his glass of Dubonnet, ordered another, and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, whisperings, of a dreadful incident, the central fact of which was a glimpse of Zette gliding wraith-like down a corridor. Lastly, there was the culminating proof, a letter found that morning in Zette's room. He drew a crumpled sheet from his pocket and handed it to Aristide.
[Illustration: "THE VILLAIN WAS A TRAVELLER IN BUTTONS--BUTTONS!"]
It was a crude, flaming, reprehensible, and entirely damning epistle. Aristide turned cold, shivering at the idea of the superb and dainty Zette coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bondon with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of absinthe and wished it were Bondon's blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon's face, and gathering at the ends of his scrubby moustache dripped in splashes on the marble table.