“Who?”
“We—you and I.—Will you abandon me to my fate in this unequal struggle? Do you know what that wretch means to do?—My father told me all about it. He has been two days in Madrid staying in his uncle’s house on purpose to spy me and watch me.—I do not know who can have told him, his uncles I suppose. Gustavo is his lawyer, and he is going to bring a charge against me.—And the base wretch could write to my father this morning, declaring that he had repented of all his wickedness, and imploring his forgiveness.—Inside that letter there was a note for me. Read it.”
Leon’s first impulse was to refuse to look at the letter; but he snatched it out of Pepa’s hand, he knew not how or why; and read as follows:
“A man who is dead has no right to expect fidelity in the wife who survives him. Happily for me, the Almighty saw fit to save my precious life. As the moment draws near when I may hope to embrace my wife and child, I have the honour of informing the first of those beloved beings that I have made up my mind to forgive her, provided she hastens to submit to my authority as a husband, seeing that my supposed departure from this world is some excuse for her delinquency. At the same time if the above-mentioned beloved being persists in believing that I am still food for the fish in the Gulf of Mexico, I hereby take the liberty of assuring her that I shall avail myself of the rights granted to me by law. My dear daughter cannot be allowed to grow up in the lap of such a mother. I am sure that the lady whose husband I have the honour to be will not prefer the delights of a criminal attachment to the sweet duties of motherhood—but, if she should, I shall bring an action in due form, having an abundance of witnesses who can prove the preliminary information required by law, and I shall claim my daughter, since the law will place her in my paternal care as soon as she is three years old.
“In order that my estimable wife may fully appreciate the strength of my position as an injured husband, I would beg her to spend an hour in her father’s library, and there, in the third book-case, on the second shelf, she will find the last edition of the code, in which interesting work I would advise her to study Act 20, cap. I, clause II.
“F. Cimarra.”
“That is the man, all over!” exclaimed Leon crumpling up the paper. “His style, his insolence, his mean irony, his absolute lack of decency and feeling. I know the hand that strikes me—God in Heaven! If such an attack, from such a villain, is not enough to justify a man in trampling on all law and custom, in forgetting his dignity nay, and his conscience—if this is not an excuse for rebellion and fury, I do not want to live!—life is not worth having!” He flung the paper on the floor and Pepa set her foot on it.
“And I will do the same to you, vile wretch, and your latest Code!” she exclaimed. Then she dropped on the sofa and bursting into tears she went on: