But the Comte de Mascaret thought that the situation was lasting too long, and he touched her on the shoulder.  That contact recalled her to herself, as if she had been burned, and getting up, she looked straight into his eyes.  “This is what I have to say to you.  I am afraid of nothing, whatever you may do to me.  You may kill me if you like.  One of your children is not yours, and one only; that I swear to you before God, who hears me here.  That was the only revenge that was possible for me in return for all your abominable masculine tyrannies, in return for the penal servitude of childbearing to which you have condemned me.  Who was my lover?  That you never will know!  You may suspect every one, but you never will find out.  I gave myself to him, without love and without pleasure, only for the sake of betraying you, and he also made me a mother.  Which is the child?  That also you never will know.  I have seven; try to find out!  I intended to tell you this later, for one has not avenged oneself on a man by deceiving him, unless he knows it.  You have driven me to confess it today.  I have now finished.”

She hurried through the church toward the open door, expecting to hear behind her the quick step:  of her husband whom she had defied and to be knocked to the ground by a blow of his fist, but she heard nothing and reached her carriage.  She jumped into it at a bound, overwhelmed with anguish and breathless with fear.  So she called out to the coachman:  “Home!” and the horses set off at a quick trot.

II

The Comtesse de Mascaret was waiting in her room for dinner time as a criminal sentenced to death awaits the hour of his execution.  What was her husband going to do?  Had he come home?  Despotic, passionate, ready for any violence as he was, what was he meditating, what had he made up his mind to do?  There was no sound in the house, and every moment she looked at the clock.  Her lady’s maid had come and dressed her for the evening and had then left the room again.  Eight o’clock struck and almost at the same moment there were two knocks at the door, and the butler came in and announced dinner.

“Has the count come in?”

“Yes, Madame la Comtesse.  He is in the diningroom.”

For a little moment she felt inclined to arm herself with a small revolver which she had bought some time before, foreseeing the tragedy which was being rehearsed in her heart.  But she remembered that all the children would be there, and she took nothing except a bottle of smelling salts.  He rose somewhat ceremoniously from his chair.  They exchanged a slight bow and sat down.  The three boys with their tutor, Abbe Martin, were on her right and the three girls, with Miss Smith, their English governess, were on her left.  The youngest child, who was only three months old, remained upstairs with his nurse.