“You ought to have said so,” said she, with a look full of contempt, “the day you won me from Sauvresy—­the day that you stole the wife of this friend who saved your life.  Do you think that was a less horrid crime?  You knew as well as I did how much my husband loved me, and that he would have preferred to die, rather than lose me thus.”

“But he knows nothing, suspects nothing of it.”

“You are mistaken; Sauvresy knows all.”

“Impossible!”

“All, I tell you—­and he has known all since that day when he came home so late from hunting.  Don’t you remember that I noticed his strange look, and said to you that my husband suspected something?  You shrugged your shoulders.  Do you forget the steps in the vestibule the night I went to your room?  He had been spying on us.  Well, do you want a more certain proof?  Look at this letter, which I found, crumpled up and wet, in one of his vest pockets.”

She showed him the letter which Sauvresy had forcibly taken from Jenny, and he recognized it well.

“It is a fatality,” said he, overwhelmed.  “But we can separate and break off with each other.  Bertha, I can go away.”

“It’s too late.  Believe me, Hector, we are to-day defending our lives.  Ah, you don’t know Clement!  You don’t know what the fury of a man like him can be, when he sees that his confidence has been outrageously abused, and his trust vilely betrayed.  If he has said nothing to me, and has not let us see any traces of his implacable anger, it is because he is meditating some frightful vengeance.”

This was only too probable, and Hector saw it clearly.

“What shall we do?” he asked, in a hoarse voice; he was almost speechless.

“Find out what change he has made in his will.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know yet.  I came to ask your advice, and I find you more cowardly than a woman.  Let me act, then; don’t do anything yourself; I will do all.”

He essayed an objection.

“Enough,” said she.  “He must not ruin us after all—­I will see—­ I will think.”

Someone below called her.  She went down, leaving Hector overcome with despair.

That evening, during which Bertha seemed happy and smiling, his face finally betrayed so distinctly the traces of his anguish, that Sauvresy tenderly asked him if he were not ill?

“You exhaust yourself tending on me, my good Hector,” said he.  “How can I ever repay your devotion?”

Tremorel had not the strength to reply.

“And that man knows all,” thought he.  “What courage!  What fate can he be reserving for us?”

The scene which was passing before Hector’s eyes made his flesh creep.  Every time that Bertha gave her husband his medicine, she took a hair-pin from her tresses, and plunged it into the little vial which she had shown him, taking up thus some small, white grains, which she dissolved in the potions prescribed by the doctor.