Madame de Mussidan bounded to her feet, asking herself whether her husband’s intellect had not given way.

“You commit a crime!” gasped she.

“I, madame, I myself!  Does that surprise you?  Have you never had any suspicion?  Perhaps you have not forgotten a fatal accident which took place out shooting, and darkened the earlier years of our married life?  Well, the thing was not an accident, but a deliberate murder committed by me.  Yes, I murdered him, and this fact is known, and can be proved.”

The Countess grew deadly pale, and extended her hand, as though to guard herself from some coming danger.

“You are horrified, are you?” continued the Count, with a sneer.  “Perhaps I inspire you with horror; but do not fear; the blood is no longer on my hands, but it is here, and is choking me.”  And as he spoke he pressed his fingers upon his heart.  “For twenty-three years I have endured this hideous recollection and even now when I wake in the night I am bathed in cold sweat, for I fancy I can hear the last gasps of the unhappy man.”

“This is horrible, too horrible!” murmured Madame de Mussidan faintly.

“Ah, but you do not know why I killed him,—­it was because the dead man had dared to tell me that the wife I adored with all the passion of my soul was unfaithful to me.”

Words of eager denial rose to the lips of the Countess; but her husband went on coldly, “And it was all true, for I heard all later on.

“Poor Montlouis! he was really loved.  There was a little shop-girl, who toiled hard for daily bread, but she was a thousand times more honorable than the haughty woman of noble race that I had just married.”

“Have mercy, Octave.”

“Yes, and she fell a victim to her love for Montlouis.  Had he lived, he would have made her his wife.  After his death, she could no longer conceal her fault.  In small towns the people are without mercy; and when she left the hospital with her baby at her breast, the women pelted her with mud.  But for me,” continued the Count, “she would have died of hunger.  Poor girl!  I did not allow her much, but with it she managed to give her son a decent education.  He has now grown up, and whatever happens, his future is safe.”

Had M. de Mussidan and his wife been less deeply engaged in this hideous recital, they would have heard the stifled sobs that came from the adjoining room.

The Count felt a certain kind of savage pleasure in venting the rage, that had for years been suppressed, upon the shrinking woman before him.  “Would it not be a cruel injustice, madame, to draw a comparison between you and this unhappy girl?  Have you always been deaf to the whisperings of conscience? and have you never thought of the future punishment which most certainly awaits you? for you have failed in the duties of daughter, wife, and mother.”

Generally the Countess cared little for her husband’s reproaches, well deserved as they might be, but to-day she quailed before him.