Hector was very indignant.  It was to this end, then, that his delays had conducted him!  She thought that she had a right now to dispose of him in spite of himself, and, as it were, to purchase him.  And he could not, dared not, say anything!

“We must be patient,” said he, “and wait—­”

“Wait—­for what?  Till he’s dead?”

“Don’t speak so.”

“Why not?” Bertha went up to him, and in a low voice, muttered: 

“He has only a week to live; and see here—­”

She drew a little vial from her pocket, and held it up to him.

“That is what convinces me that I am not mistaken.”

Hector became livid, and could not stifle a cry of horror.  He comprehended all now—­he saw how it was that Bertha had been so easily subdued, why she had refrained from speaking of Laurence, her strange words, her calm confidence.

“Poison!” stammered he, confounded.

“Yes, poison.”

“You have not used it?”

She fixed a hard, stern look upon him—­the look which had subdued his will, against which he had struggled in vain—­and in a calm voice, emphasizing each word, answered: 

“I have used it.”

The count was, indeed, a dangerous man, unscrupulous, not recoiling from any wickedness when his passions were to be indulged, capable of everything; but this horrible crime awoke in him all that remained of honest energy.

“Well,” he cried, in disgust, “you will not use it again!”

He hastened toward the door, shuddering; she stopped him.

“Reflect before you act,” said she, coldly.  “I will betray the fact of your relations with me; who will then believe that you are not my accomplice?”

He saw the force of this terrible menace, coming from Bertha.

“Come,” said she, ironically, “speak—­betray me if you choose.  Whatever happens, for happiness or misery, we shall no longer be separated; our destinies will be the same.”

Hector fell heavily into a chair, more overwhelmed than if he had been struck with a hammer.  He held his bursting forehead between his hands; he saw himself shut up in an infernal circle, without outlet.

“I am lost!” he stammered, without knowing what he said, “I am lost!”

He was to be pitied; his face was terribly haggard, great drops of perspiration stood at the roots of his hair, his eyes wandered as if he were insane.  Bertha shook him rudely by the arm, for his cowardice exasperated her.

“You are afraid,” she said.  “You are trembling!  Lost?  You would not say so, if you loved me as I do you.  Will you be lost because I am to be your wife, because we shall be free to love in the face of all the world?  Lost!  Then you have no idea of what I have endured?  You don’t know, then, that I am tired of suffering, fearing, feigning.”

“Such a crime!”

She burst out with a laugh that made him shudder.