Yes, I had been fatally wounded in
the heart on the day that I learned that you were faithless to me."
He spoke of his death without apparent emotion; but at the words,
"You were faithless to me," his voice faltered and trembled.
"I would not, could not believe it at first. I doubted the evidence
of my senses, rather than doubt you. But I was forced to believe at
last. I was no longer anything in my house but a laughing-stock.
But I was in your way. You and your lover needed more room and
liberty. You were tired of constraint and hypocrisy. Then it was
that, believing that my death would make you free and rich, you
brought in poison to rid yourselves of me."
Bertha had at least the heroism of crime. All was discovered; well,
she threw down the mask. She tried to defend her accomplice, who
lay unconscious in a chair.
"It is I that have done it all," cried she. "He is innocent."
Sauvresy turned pale with rage.
"Ah, really," said he, "my friend Hector is innocent! It wasn't he,
then, who, to pay me up--not for his life, for he was too cowardly
to kill himself; but for his honor, which he owes to me--took my
wife from me? Wretch! I hold out my hand to him when he is
drowning, I welcome him like a brother, and in return, he desolates
my hearth! .
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