“Dear Madam,—A friend—or perhaps an enemy, no matter—a person who knows but wishes to remain unknown—takes this means of informing you that you are being betrayed. Your husband, so seeming virtuous, and your friend who wants to pass for an innocent, are laughing at you for your good-humoured confidence—you poor blinded wife. I have my own reasons for wishing to tear the mask off both their faces. It is not from goodwill to you that I so act, for I can easily imagine that this detection of two persons dear to you may bring you more pain than profit—but I have no goodwill to you in my heart. Perhaps I am a rejected adorer, who is taking his revenge this way. What matters the motive? The fact is there, and if you wish for proofs I can furnish them to you. Besides, without proofs you would give no credit to an anonymous letter. The accompanying ‘billet’ was lost by Countess Gr——”
This astounding letter lay on our breakfast-table one fine spring morning. Frederick was sitting opposite to me, busied with his letters, while I read and re-read the above ten times over. The note which accompanied the traitorous epistle was enclosed in an envelope of its own, and I put off tearing it open.
I looked at Frederick. He was deep in a morning paper; still he must have felt the look which I fixed on him, for he let the newspaper fall, and with his usual kindly, smiling expression, turned his face to me.
“Hollo, what is the matter, Martha? Why are you staring at me in that way?”
“I wanted to know whether you are still fond of me.”
“Oh, no, not for a long time,” he said jestingly. “Really I have never been able to bear you.”
“That I do not believe.”
“But now I begin to see—— But you are quite pale. Have you had any bad news?”
I hesitated. Should I show him the letter? Should I first look at the piece of evidence which I held in my hand still unbroken? The thoughts whirled through my head—my Frederick, my all, my friend and husband, him whom I trusted and loved—could he be lost to me? Unfaithful, he! Oh, it must have been only a momentary intoxication of the senses—nothing more. Was there not enough indulgence in my heart to forgive it, to forget it, to regard it as having never happened? But to be false! How would it be, if his heart, too, had turned from me; how, if he preferred the seductive Lori to me?
“Well, do speak. You seem quite to have lost your voice. Show me the letter which has so shocked you,” and he stretched his hand out for it.