Time passed.  Hector and Bertha repaired to Sauvresy’s room; he was asleep.  They noiselessly took chairs beside the fire, as usual, and the maid retired.  In order that the sick man might not be disturbed by the light of the lamp, curtains had been hung so that, when lying down, he could not see the fireplace and mantel.  In order to see these, he must have raised himself on his pillow and leaned forward on his right arm.  But now he was asleep, breathing painfully, feverish, and shuddering convulsively.  Bertha and Hector did not speak; the solemn and sinister silence was only broken by the ticking of the clock, or by the leaves of the book which Hector was reading.  Ten o’clock struck; soon after Sauvresy moved, turned over, and awoke.  Bertha was at his side in an instant; she saw that his eyes were open.

“Do you feel a little better, dear Clement?” she asked.

“Neither better nor worse.”

“Do you want anything?”

“I am thirsty.”

Hector, who had raised his eyes when his friend spoke, suddenly resumed his reading.

Bertha, standing by the mantel, began to prepare with great care Dr. R—–­’s last prescription; when it was ready, she took out the fatal little vial as usual, and thrust one of her hair-pins into it.

She had not time to draw it out before she felt a light touch upon her shoulder.  A shudder shook her from head to foot; she suddenly turned and uttered a loud scream, a cry of terror and horror.

“Oh!”

The hand which had touched her was her husband’s.  While she was busied with the poison at the mantel, Sauvresy had softly raised himself; more softly still, he had pulled the curtain aside, and had stretched out his arm and touched her.  His eyes glittered with hate and anger.

Bertha’s cry was answered by another dull cry, or rather groan; Tremorel had seen and comprehended all; he was overwhelmed.

“All is discovered!” Their eyes spoke these three words to each other.  They saw them everywhere, written in letters of fire.  There was a moment of stupor, of silence so profound that Hector heard his temples beat.  Sauvresy had got back under the bed-clothes again.  He laughed loudly, wildly, just as a skeleton might have laughed whose jaws and teeth rattled together.

But Bertha was not one of those persons who are overcome by a single blow, terrible as it might be.  She trembled like a leaf; her legs staggered; but her mind was already at work seeking a subterfuge.  What had Sauvresy seen—­anything?  What did he know?  For even had he seen the vial, this might be explained.  It could only have been by simple chance that he had touched her at the moment when she was using the poison.  All these thoughts flashed across her mind in a moment, as rapid as lightning shooting between the clouds.  And then she dared to approach the bed, and, with a frightfully constrained smile, to say: