If he insisted
on marrying, would not Bertha carry out her threats? Evidently;
for he knew well that she was one of those women who shrink from
nothing, whom no consideration could arrest. He guessed what she
would do, from what she had said in a quarrel with him about Jenny.
She had told him, "I will confess everything to Sauvresy, and we
will be the more bound together by shame than by all the ceremonies
of the church."
This was surely the mode she would adopt to break a marriage which
was so hateful to her; and Tremorel trembled at the idea of Sauvresy
knowing all.
"What would he do," thought he, "if Bertha told him? He would kill
me off-hand--that's what I would do in his place. Suppose he
didn't; I should have to fight a duel with him, and if I killed him,
quit the country. Whatever would happen, my marriage is irrevocably
broken, and Bertha seems to be on my hands for all time."
He saw no possible way out of the horrible situation in which he had
put himself.
"I must wait," thought he.
And he waited, going secretly to the mayor's, for he really loved
Laurence. He waited, devoured by anxiety, struggling between
Sauvresy's urgency and Bertha's threats.
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