The mere prospect of this anticipated felicity so shocked Hector, that his better self for the moment got the mastery; he essayed to move Bertha.

“For the last time,” said he, “I implore you to renounce this terrible, dangerous project.  You see that you were mistaken—­that Sauvresy suspects nothing, but loves you as well as ever.”

The expression of Bertha’s face suddenly changed; she sat quite still, in a pensive revery.

“Don’t let’s talk any more of that,” said she, at last.  “Perhaps I was mistaken.  Perhaps he only had doubts—­perhaps, although he has discovered something, he hopes to win me back by his goodness.  But you see—­”

She stopped.  Doubtless she did not wish to alarm him.

He was already much alarmed.  The next day he went off to Melun without a word; being unable to bear the sight of this agony, and fearing to betray himself.  But he left his address, and when she sent word that Sauvresy was always crying out for him, he hastily returned.  Her letter was most imprudent and absurd, and made his hair stand on end.  He had intended, on his arrival, to reproach her; but it was she who upbraided him.

“Why this flight?”

“I could not stay here—­I suffered, trembled, felt as if I were dying.”

“What a coward you are!”

He would have replied, but she put her finger on his mouth, and pointed with her other hand to the door of the next room.

“Sh!  Three doctors have been in consultation there for the past hour, and I haven’t been able to hear a word of what they said.  Who knows what they are about?  I shall not be easy till they go away.”

Bertha’s fears were not without foundation.  When Sauvresy had his last relapse, and complained of a severe neuralgia in the face and an irresistible craving for pepper, Dr. R—–­ had uttered a significant exclamation.  It was nothing, perhaps—­yet Bertha had heard it, and she thought she surprised a sudden suspicion on the doctor’s part; and this now disturbed her, for she thought that it might be the subject of the consultation.  The suspicion, however, if there had ever been any, quickly vanished.  The symptoms entirely changed twelve hours later, and the next day the sick man felt pains quite the opposite of those which had previously distressed him.  This very inconstancy of the distemper served to puzzle the doctor’s conclusions.  Sauvresy, in these latter days, had scarcely suffered at all, he said, and had slept well at night; but he had, at times, strange and often distressing sensations.  He was evidently failing hourly; he was dying—­everyone perceived it.  And now Dr. R—–­ asked for a consultation, the result of which had not been reached when Tremorel returned.

The drawing-room door at last swung open, and the calm faces of the physicians reassured the poisoner.  Their conclusions were that the case was hopeless; everything had been tried and exhausted; no human resources had been neglected; the only hope was in Sauvresy’s strong constitution.