“Doubtless!  I do not wish to offend her:” 

“Ah, my dear cousin, don’t be uneasy; suppress this uneasiness; I assure you she will be delighted!”

“Why should she?”

“I have my reasons for thinking so;” and the young woman in uttering these words was seized with a fit of sardonic laughter which came near convulsion, so shaken were her nerves by the terrible tension.

Camors, to whom little by little the light fell stronger on the more obscure points of the terrible enigma proposed to him, saw the necessity of shortening a scene which had overtasked her faculties to an almost insupportable degree.  He rose: 

“I am compelled to leave you,” he said; “for I am not dining at home.  But I will come to-morrow, if you will permit me.”

“Certainly.  You authorize me to speak to the General?”

“Well, yes, for I really can see no reasonable objection.”

“Very good.  I adore you!” said the Marquise.  She gave him her hand, which he kissed and immediately departed.

It would have required a much keener vision than that of M. de Campvallon to detect any break, or any discordance, in the audacious comedy which had just been played before him by these two great artists.

The mute play of their eyes alone could have betrayed them; and that he could not see.

As to their tranquil, easy, natural dialogue there was not in it a word which he could seize upon, and which did not remove all his disquietude, and confound all his suspicions.  From this moment, and ever afterward, every shadow was effaced from his mind; for the ability to imagine such a plot as that in which his wife in her despair had sought refuge, or to comprehend such depth of perversity, was not in the General’s pure and simple spirit.

When he reappeared before his wife, on leaving his concealment, he was constrained and awkward.  With a gesture of confusion and humility he took her hand, and smiled upon her with all the goodness and tenderness of his soul beaming from his face.

At this moment the Marquise, by a new reaction of her nervous system, broke into weeping and sobbing; and this completed the General’s despair.

Out of respect to this worthy man, we shall pass over a scene the interest of which otherwise is not sufficient to warrant the unpleasant effect it would produce on all honest people.  We shall equally pass over without record the conversation which took place the next day between the Marquise and M. de Camors.

Camors had experienced, as we have observed, a sentiment of repulsion at hearing the name of Mademoiselle de Tecle appear in the midst of this intrigue.  It amounted almost to horror, and he could not control the manifestation of it.  How could he conquer this supreme revolt of his conscience to the point of submitting to the expedient which would make his intrigue safe?  By what detestable sophistries he dared persuade himself that he owed everything to his accomplice—­even this, we shall not attempt to explain.  To explain would be to extenuate, and that we wish not to do.  We shall only say that he resigned himself to this marriage.  On the path which he had entered a man can check himself as little as he can check a flash of lightning.