But it is precisely Dora whom Andre has married; and,
learning this, Tekli tries to withdraw, or minimize, his imputation. For
a moment a duel seems imminent; but Andre's friend, Favrolles, adjures
him to keep his head; and the three men proceed to thrash the matter out
as calmly as possible, with the result that, in the course of
half-an-hour or so, it seems to be proved beyond all doubt that the
woman Andre adores, and whom he has just married, is a treacherous spy,
who sells to tyrannical foreign governments the lives of political
exiles and the honour of the men who fall into her toils. The crushing
suspicion is ultimately disproved, by one of the tricks in which Sardou
delighted; but that does not here concern us. Artificial as are its
causes and its consequences, the "scene of the three men," while it
lasts, holds us breathless and absorbed; and Andre's fall from the
pinnacle of happiness to the depth of misery, is a typical peripety.
Equally typical and infinitely more tragic is another postnuptial
peripety--the scene of the mutual confession of Angel Clare and Tess in
Mr.
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