“Impossible!” said Leon. “Utterly, totally impossible. A little while since it would have been easy—but what effort did she make to effect it?—You ought to know.”
The little man looked at the ground and nodded affirmatively.
“Of course! you know all about it!” said Leon bitterly. “My wife’s conscience-keeper, the ruler of my household, the master of my married life, who has held the sacred chain in his hand and could bind or unloose—the man whom I see now for the first time since he came to see my hapless brother-in-law, Luis Gonzaga, who died in my house—this man who, though it is no earthly concern of his, has secretly disposed of my happiness and of my life as a master does of his purchased slaves.—You, I say, must of course, know everything.”
“This worldly tone of haughty philosophy is well known to me too, Señor,” said Paoletti, in a tone of apostolic reproof. “If you wish me to meet you on that ground and to confute you utterly I will do so.”
“No—I did not come here to argue. The horrible struggle is over—I am beaten, after having risked honour and delicacy, after fighting with skill, nay, and with fury. My opinions were settled long since, and cannot now be altered. This is not the moment for discussion; we are in presence of a terrible fact.”
“María then is dying?”
Leon told Paoletti of his wife’s visit to his lodgings, and of the scene which culminated in the fainting fit and subsequent illness of the saintly María.
There was a pause; then Paoletti said severely:
“It is clear to me that María loves you, and that you are the real traitor to the contract—guilty to-day as you were yesterday and from the beginning. Without further knowledge of the facts, I cannot pronounce on the step taken by my beloved daughter; but such a step, such a proceeding, taken as it stands, argues that she still loves you, and that her tender soul is full of sweetness and kindness for a man who is wholly undeserving of them.”
“You, who know everything, know very well that my wife no longer loves me; and if those who are incapable of judging of a pure and noble feeling choose to give the name of love to a sentiment that has no title to it, I shall at once assert myself as the sole judge of my unhappy wife’s feelings, and declare that they do not satisfy my demands, that I repudiate them, and put them out of court in deciding on the question of separation or reunion.”