shadows were confounded in a long embrace.
Sauvresy could not repress an agonized cry, which was lost amid the noises of the night. He had asked for certainty; here it was. The truth, indisputable, evident, was clear to him. He had to seek for nothing more, now, except for the means to punish surely and terribly. Bertha and Hector were talking amicably. Sauvresy saw that she was about to go downstairs, and that he could not now go for the letter. He went in hurriedly, forgetting, in his fear of being discovered, to lock the garden door. He did not perceive that he had been standing with naked feet in the snow, till he had returned to his bedroom again; he saw some flakes on his slippers, and they were damp; quickly he threw them under the bed, and jumped in between the clothes, and pretended to be asleep.
It was time, for Bertha soon came in. She went to the bed, and thinking that he had not woke up, returned to her embroidery by the fire. Tremorel also soon reappeared; he had forgotten to take his paper, and had come back for it. He seemed uneasy.
“Have you been out to-night, Madame?” asked he, in a low voice.
“No.”
“Have all the servants gone to bed?”
“I suppose so; but why do you ask?”
“Since I have been upstairs, somebody has gone out into the garden, and come back again.”
Bertha looked at him with a troubled glance.
“Are you sure of what you say?”
“Certainly. Snow is falling, and whoever went out brought some back on his shoes. This has melted in the vestibule—”
Mme. Sauvresy seized the lamp, and interrupting Hector, said:
“Come.”
Tremorel was right. Here and there on the vestibule pavement were little puddles.
“Perhaps this water has been here some time,” suggested Bertha.
“No. It was not there an hour ago, I could swear. Besides, see, here is a little snow that has not melted yet.”
“It must have been one of the servants.”
Hector went to the door and examined it.
“I do not think so,” said he. “A servant would have shut the bolts; here they are, drawn back. Yet I myself shut the door to-night, and distinctly recollect fastening the bolts.”
“It’s very strange!”
“And all the more so, look you, because the traces of the water do not go much beyond the drawing-room door.”
They remained silent, and exchanged anxious looks. The same terrible thought occurred to them both.
“If it were he?”
But why should he have gone into the garden? It could not have been to spy on them.
They did not think of the window.
“It couldn’t have been Clement,” said Bertha, at last. “He was asleep when I went back, and he is in a calm and deep slumber now.”
Sauvresy, stretched upon his bed, heard what his enemies were saying. He cursed his imprudence.
“Suppose,” thought he, “they should think of looking at my gown and slippers!”
Happily this simple idea did not occur to them; after reassuring each other as well as they were able, they separated; but each heart carried an anxious doubt. Sauvresy on that night had a terrible crisis in his illness. Delirium, succeeding this ray of reason, renewed its possession of his brain. The next morning Dr. R—— pronounced him in more danger than ever; and sent a despatch to Paris, saying that he would be detained at Valfeuillu three or four days. The distemper redoubled in violence; very contradictory symptoms appeared. Each day brought some new phase of it, which confounded the foresight of the doctors. Every time that Sauvresy had a moment of reason, the scene at the window recurred to him, and drove him to madness again.
On that terrible night when he had gone out into the snow, he had not been mistaken; Bertha was really begging something of Hector. This was it:
M. Courtois, the mayor, had invited Hector to accompany himself and his family on an excursion to Fontainebleau on the following day. Hector had cordially accepted the invitation. Bertha could not bear the idea of his spending the day in Laurence’s company, and begged him not to go. She told him there were plenty of excuses to relieve him from his promise; for instance, he might urge that it would not be seemly for him to go when his friend lay dangerously ill. At first he positively refused to grant her prayer, but by her supplications and menaces she persuaded him, and she did not go downstairs until he had sworn that he would write to M. Courtois that very evening declining the invitation. He kept his word, but he was disgusted by her tyrannical behavior. He was tired of forever sacrificing his wishes and his liberty, so that he could plan nothing, say or promise nothing without consulting this jealous woman, who would scarcely let him wander out of her sight. The chain became heavier and heavier to bear, and he began to see that sooner or later it must be wrenched apart. He had never loved either Bertha or Jenny, or anyone, probably; but he now loved the mayor’s daughter. Her dowry of a million had at first dazzled him, but little by little he had been subdued by Laurence’s charms of mind and person. He, the dissipated rake, was seduced by such grave and naпve innocence, such frankness and beauty; he would have married Laurence had she been poor—as Sauvresy married Bertha. But he feared Bertha too much to brave her suddenly, and so he waited. The next day after the quarrel about Fontainebleau, he declared that he was indisposed, attributed it to the want of exercise, and took to the saddle for several hours every day afterward. But he did not go far; only to the mayor’s. Bertha at first did not perceive anything suspicious in Tremorel’s rides; it reassured her to see him go off on his horse. After some days, however, she thought she saw in him a certain feeling of satisfaction concealed under the semblance of fatigue. She began to have doubts, and these increased every time he went out; all sorts of conjectures worried her while he was away. Where did he go? Probably to see Laurence, whom she feared and detested. The suspicion soon became a certainty with her. One evening Hector appeared, carrying in his button-hole a flower which Laurence herself had put there, and which he had forgotten to take out. Bertha took it gently, examined it, smelt it, and, compelling herself to smile:
“Why,” said she, “what a pretty flower!”
“So I thought,” answered Hector, carelessly, “though I don’t know what it is called.”
“Would it be bold to ask who gave it to you?”
“Not at all. It’s a present from our good Plantat.”
All Orcival knew that M. Plantat, a monomaniac on flowers, never gave them away to anyone except Mme. Laurence. Hector’s evasion was an unhappy one, and Bertha was not deceived.
“You promised me, Hector,” said she, “not to see Laurence any more, and to give up this marriage.”
He tried to reply.
“Let me speak,” she continued, “and explain yourself afterward. You have broken your word—you are deceiving my confidence! But I tell you, you shall not marry her!” Then, without awaiting his reply, she overwhelmed him with reproaches. Why had he come here at all? She was happy in her home before she knew him. She did not love Sauvresy, it was true; but she esteemed him, and he was good to her. Ignorant of the happiness of true love, she did not desire it. But he had come, and she could not resist his fascination. And now, after having engaged her affection, he was going to desert her, to marry another! Tremorel listened to her, perfectly amazed at her audacity. What! She dared to pretend that it was he who had abused her innocence, when, on the contrary, he had sometimes been astonished at her persistency! Such was the depth of her corruption, as it seemed to him, that he wondered whether he were her first or her twentieth lover. And she had so led him on, and had so forcibly made him feel the intensity of her will, that he had been fain still to submit to this despotism. But he had now determined to resist on the first opportunity; and he resisted.
“Well,