Caught in the Net by Emile Gaboriau (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

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.

“With your entrance into my life,” continued the Count, “came shame and misfortune. When people saw you so gay and careless under the oak-trees of your ancestral home, who could have suspected that your heart contained a dark secret? When my only wish was to win you for my wife, how did I know that you were weaving a hideous conspiracy against me? Even when so young, you were a monster of dissimulation and hypocrisy. Guilt never overshadowed your brow, nor did falsehood dim the frankness of your eyes. On the day of our marriage I mentally reproached myself for any unworthiness. Wretched fool that I was, I was happy beyond all power of expression, when you, madame, completed the measure of your guilt by adding infidelity to it.”

“It is false,” murmured the Countess. “You have been deceived.”

M. de Mussidan laughed a grim and terrible laugh.

“Not so,” answered he; “I have every proof. This seems strange to you, does it? You have always looked upon me as one of those foolish husbands that may be duped without suspicion on their parts. You thought that you had placed a veil over my eyes, but I could see through it when you little suspected that I could do so. Why did I not tell you this before? Because I had not ceased to love you, and this fatal love was stronger than all honor, pride, and even self-respect.” He poured out this tirade with inconceivable rapidity, and the Countess listened to it in awe-struck silence. “I kept silence,” continued the Count, “because I knew that on the day I uttered the truth you would be entirely lost to me. I might have killed you; I had every right to do so, but I could not live apart from you. You will never know how near the shadow of death has been to you. When I have kissed you, I have fancied that your lips were soiled with the kisses of others, and I could hardly keep my hands from clutching your ivory neck until life was extinct, and failed utterly to decide whether I loved you or hated you the most.”

“Have mercy, Octave! have mercy!” pleaded the unhappy woman.

“You are surprised, I can see,” answered he, with a dark smile; “yet I could give you further food for wonder if I pleased, but I have said enough now.”

A tremor passed over the frame of the Countess. Was her husband acquainted with the existence of the letters? All hinged upon this. He could not have read them, or he would have spoken in very different terms, had he known the mystery contained in them.

“Let me speak,” began she.

“Not a word,” replied her husband.

“On my honor—”

“All is ended; but I must not forget to tell you of one of my youthful follies. You may laugh at it, but that signifies nothing. I actually believed that I could gain your affection. I said to myself that one day you would be moved by my deep passion for you. I was a fool. As if love or affection could ever penetrate the icy barriers that guarded your heart.”

“You have no pity,” wailed she.

He gazed upon her with eyes in which the pent-up anger of twenty years blazed and consumed slowly. “And you, what are you? I drained to the bottom the poisoned cup held out to a deceived husband by an unfaithful wife. Each day widened the breach between us, until at last we sank into this miserable existence which is wearing out my life. I kept no watch on you; I was not made for a jailer. What I wanted was your soul and heart. To imprison the body was easy, but your soul would still have been free to wander in imagination to the meeting-place where your lover expected you. I know not how I had the courage to remain by your side. It was not to save an honor that had already gone, but merely to keep up appearances; for as long as we were nominally together the tongue of scandal was forced to remain silent.”

Again the unhappy woman attempted to protest her innocence, and again the Count paid no heed to her. “I wished too,” resumed he, “to save some portion of our property, for your insatiable extravagance swallowed up all like a bottomless abyss. At last your trades-people, believing me to be ruined, refused you credit, and this saved me. I had my daughter to think of, and have gathered together a rich dowry for her, and yet——” he hesitated, and ceased speaking for a moment.

“And yet,” repeated Madame de Mussidan.

“I have never kissed her,” he burst forth with a fresh and terrible explosion of wrath, “without feeling a hideous doubt as to whether she was really my child.”

This was more than the Countess could endure.

“Enough,” she cried, “enough! I have been guilty, Octave; but not so guilty as you imagine.”

“Why do you venture to defend yourself?”

“Because it is my duty to guard Sabine.”

“You should have thought of this earlier,” answered the Count with a sneer. “You should have moulded her mind—have taught her what was noble and good, and have perused the unsullied pages of the book of her young heart.”

In the deepest agitation the Countess answered,—

“Ah, Octave, why did you not speak of this sooner, if you knew all; but I will now tell you everything.”

By an inconceivable error of judgment the Count corrected her speech. “Spare us both,” said he. “If I have broken through the silence that I have maintained for many a year, it is because I knew that no word you could utter would touch my heart.”

Feeling that all hope had fled, Madame de Mussidan fell backward upon the couch, while Sabine, unable to listen to any more terrible revelations, had crept into her own chamber. The Count was about to leave the drawing-room, when a servant entered, bearing a letter on a silver salver. De Mussidan tore it open; it was from M. de Breulh-Faverlay, asking to be released from his engagement to Sabine de Mussidan. This last stroke was almost too much for the Count’s nerves, for in this act he saw the hand of the man who had come to him with such deadly threats, and terror filled his soul as he thought of the far-stretching arm of him whose bondslave he found himself to be; but before he could collect his thoughts, his daughter’s maid went into the room crying with all her might, “Help, help; my poor mistress is dying!”