“How do you know?”

“Parbleu, he loves her already.”

“Who told you so?”

“Himself.”

And Sauvresy began to laugh about Hector’s passion, which he said was becoming quite pastoral.

“Would you believe,” said he, laughing, “that he thinks our worthy Courtois a man of wit?  Ah, what spectacles these lovers look through!  He spends two or three hours every day with the mayor.  What do you suppose he does there?”

Bertha, by great effort, succeeded in dissembling her grief; she reappeared with a smiling face.  She went and came, apparently calm, though suffering the bitterest anguish a woman can endure.  And she could not run to Hector, and ask him if it were true!

For Sauvresy must be deceiving her.  Why?  She knew not.  No matter.  She felt her hatred of him increasing to disgust; for she excused and pardoned her lover, and she blamed her husband alone.  Whose idea was this marriage?  His.  Who had awakened Hector’s hopes, and encouraged them?  He, always he.  While he had been harmless, she had been able to pardon him for having married her; she had compelled herself to bear him, to feign a love quite foreign to her heart.  But now he became hateful; should she submit to his interference in a matter which was life or death to her?

She did not close her eyes all night; she had one of those horrible nights in which crimes are conceived.  She did not find herself alone with Hector until after breakfast the next day, in the billiard-hall.

“Is it true?” she asked.

The expression of her face was so menacing that he quailed before it.  He stammered: 

“True—­what?”

“Your marriage.”

He was silent at first, asking himself whether he should tell the truth or equivocate.  At last, irritated by Bertha’s imperious tone, he replied: 

“Yes.”

She was thunderstruck at this response.  Till then, she had a glimmer of hope.  She thought that he would at least try to reassure her, to deceive her.  There are times when a falsehood is the highest homage.  But no—­he avowed it.  She was speechless; words failed her.

Tremorel began to tell her the motives which prompted his conduct.  He could not live forever at Valfeuillu.  What could he, with his habits and tastes, do with a few thousand crowns a year?  He was thirty; he must, now or never, think of the future.  M. Courtois would give his daughter a million, and at his death there would be a great deal more.  Should he let this chance slip?  He cared little for Laurence, it was the dowry he wanted.  He took no pains to conceal his meanness; he rather gloried in it, speaking of the marriage as simply a bargain, in which he gave his name and title in exchange for riches.  Bertha stopped him with a look full of contempt.

“Spare yourself,” said she.  “You love Laurence.”

He would have protested; he really disliked her.