Milady spends the evening thinking about Lord de Winter's plans, as well as her own. She knows that if she somehow fails with Mr. Felton, she will be sent to the colonies. Naturally she will find her way back again, but she will lose a year or more in the process. By then, d'Artagnan will already be the winner of their little battle, and the Cardinal will no longer care enough to help her with her revenge. She could not stand that, so she cannot let Lord de Winter win.

Milady is quite confident that she can convince Mr. Felton to help her, but she wishes he were not a fool and a Puritan. It is far easier to manipulate a sinner like d’Artagnan, who is primarily interested in his own bodily desires. With a religious man like Mr. Felton, she is obliged to stimulate the sense of moral justice instead.

At midnight, Felton arrives and tells the guard in the hallway that he will spend the night on suicide watch in the prisoner's room. The guard, who is not nearly as high-minded as Mr. Felton, laughs and advises him “to look into her bed, too!” Mr. Felton ignores this and enters the room. Milady immediately asks to see the knife he has brought her. He shows her, then puts it on the table and demands to hear her story.

As Mr. Felton listens with rapt attention, Milady claims that, years ago, her beauty attracted the attention of a certain highborn nobleman. He tried, using trickery and violence, to make her betray her Puritan beliefs and give up her body to him—but she refused. Eventually he resorted to drugging a glass of water and giving it to her to drink. When she passed out, he carried her away.

Continuing her lie, Milady says that she awoke, naked, in a circular room with no doors. She got dressed and examined the room, but she could not find any way out. She remained alone, without food or drink, until about seven or eight in the evening, when a trapdoor opened in the ceiling. Above her stood the nobleman who had been pursuing her for so long, who gloatingly told her that he had raped her in her sleep. He asked her to give in and become his mistress. She refused, and this obviously annoyed him. He shut the door and left her alone again.

Mr. Felton believes every word of Milady’s story, and he is furious. He repeatedly interrupts her to ask the name of the man who treated her so horribly. Each time, she shushes him. She forces herself to look mournful, but inwardly she is thrilled that her plan is working.

Continuing her story, Milady explains that she resisted her persecutor, who raped her again the following night. The day after that, she managed to steal a knife that was brought to her with a meal, but the nobleman returned wearing a mail shirt that protected him from her attempt to stab him. Nevertheless, her resistance was too unbreakable. He eventually gave up and offered to release her, whereupon she swore that she would tell the world about his cruelty. This made him angry, and he resolved to condemn her as a criminal.

Here Milady pauses in her story and pretends to weep. She peeks at Mr. Felton's face and notices to her satisfaction that he seems weak with horror.