She recoiled, livid, as at the sight of a ghost.  He, O God!  Why he?  How was it he was there?  Of all the messengers of misfortune he was the one whom she had least expected.  Had the dead son risen before her she would not have shuddered more dreadfully than she did at this apparition of the father.

She did not speak.  He simply said:  “They made the plunge, they are both dead—­like Blaise.”

Then, though she still said nothing, she looked at him.  For a moment their eyes met.  And in her glance he read everything:  the murder was begun afresh, effected, consummated.  Over yonder lay the bodies, dead, one atop of the other.

“Wretched woman, to what monstrous perversity have you fallen!  And how much blood there is upon you!”

By an effort of supreme pride Constance was able to draw herself up and even increase her stature, still wishing to conquer, and cry aloud that she was indeed the murderess, that she had always thwarted him, and would ever do so.  But Mathieu was already overwhelming her with a final revelation.

“You don’t know, then, that that ruffian, Alexandre, was one of the murderers of your friend, Madame Angelin, the poor woman who was robbed and strangled one winter afternoon.  I compassionately hid that from you.  But he would now be at the galleys had I spoken out!  And if I were to speak to-day you would be there too!”

That was the hatchet-stroke.  She did not speak, but dropped, all of a lump, upon the carpet, like a tree which has been felled.  This time her defeat was complete; destiny, which she awaited, had turned against her and thrown her to the ground.  A mother the less, perverted by the love which she had set on her one child, a mother duped, robbed, and maddened, who had glided into murder amid the dementia born of inconsolable motherliness!  And now she lay there, stretched out, scraggy and withered, poisoned by the affection which she had been unable to bestow.

Mathieu became anxious, and summoned the old servant, who, after procuring assistance, carried her mistress to her bed and then undressed her.  Meantime, as Constance gave no sign of life, seized as she was by one of those fainting fits which often left her quite breathless, Mathieu himself went for Boutan, and meeting him just as he was returning home for dinner, was luckily able to bring him back at once.

Boutan, who was now nearly seventy-two, and was quietly spending his last years in serene cheerfulness, born of his hope in life, had virtually ceased practising, only attending a very few old patients, his friends.  However, he did not refuse Mathieu’s request.  When he had examined Constance he made a gesture of hopelessness, the meaning of which was so plain that Mathieu, his anxiety increasing, bethought himself of trying to find Beauchene in order that the latter might, at least, be present if his wife should die.  But the old servant, on being questioned, began by