She caught the last word, “who,” and went on: “Who was killed? Why, Count de Varney! He was a wicked, old wretch! Had a palsied arm, and was broken in health when Miriam first met him! Well, for years she bore his name, and she was the active mistress of his great, lonely home, and a most devoted nurse to him, but she was terribly alone! The servants, who disliked her because she was a foreigner, she ignored all save one, the Count’s valet—him she loathed! She tried to have him sent away and failed, and he knew she had failed. Not a pleasant situation, was it? I must tell you, that in the left wing of the great building there was a room whose windows chanced to overlook those of the private apartments of the Count and Countess, in the main building. This peculiarity was well known, too, and highly valued by the spying servants, and from that room came the evidence that so nearly ruined their hated mistress. The Count had been improving, but as his strength increased his temper roughened, and one day, through one of his bursts of rage, she learned that she had been cruelly, deliberately betrayed—tricked!—by the merest mockery of a marriage; one that, in France at least, was utterly worthless! Surprise—anguish—shame—all at last were lost in fury! A fury so wild—so filled with threats—that the Count fairly quailed before it—begged to be spared a scandal—swore he would yet marry her—nay, he would now, this moment, draw up his will and make her his heiress! Give all to her in her maiden name—so that she should be protected, should aught happen to him before he could marry her! This will he proceeded to have drawn up at once, for you see, during those past years, Miriam had learned much of his outrageous past—knew more of his secret ill-doings than he quite realized—knew, indeed, that he had placed himself within the reach of law! And now, in her otherwise helpless anger, she determined to at least punish him with a great fright. So she secretly prepared and sent an unsigned letter, of seeming friendly warning, to the Count, telling him of the very worst of his past acts. That he had been discovered at last, and that by the evening of that day the officers would arrive at the château to arrest him! The letter came—Count de Varney read it! Miriam had thought to frighten him, and she succeeded so perfectly that the old man—white-lipped—rose from the table, and took his trembling way to his own room, where he hurriedly and clumsily hung himself.”
“Why,” I cried, “I thought you said he had been murdered?”
“Wait!” she said impatiently—“Wait! Over in the wing-room there was a woman, not spying on the movements of her master or mistress—she afterwards swore—but being in love with the valet, she was watching for him, and so happened to be a witness to the hanging of the old Count. No sooner—swore this woman—had her master kicked away the chair on which he had been standing, than a door opened and Madame de Varney entered. For one instant she stood apparently stunned by the sight before her—and then she laughed! She made no movement to call for help—she offered no help herself, but came closer to the writhing, horribly-struggling, hanging figure! The woman swore that once her master threw out his hand imploringly—that she thought he touched her mistress, she was so close to him—but she, the witness, turned faint just then at the awful drawing up of the hanging man’s limbs and did not see quite clearly—but another servant joined just then, and both watched—and swore that only when the master was quite still did the mistress move, and then she went first to a desk and looked at some papers, and then rushed to the door, throwing it open and calling for help! She rang the bell violently, and the valet rushed in at her call, as if he had been standing at the very door—but before he made a movement to cut down the body, he spoke fiercely and rapidly to the Countess, and turned to the swaying figure of the Count de Varney, who had died horribly of slow strangulation!
“The trial was long, for that part of the world. The scandal was great, the mock-marriage being scoffed at and Madame Miriam de B—— treated simply as an adventuress. The will in her favor told against her greatly, but, to the stupefaction of every one, the valet defended her—swearing he had seen his master before his mistress had—that he was dead before she entered the room—that he had gone for help, not wishing to touch the body without a witness being present, etc. She swore that her husband was dead when she found him—but without the valet she would certainly have been condemned to long, long imprisonment at the very least. She lives under an assumed name now, and just wanders over the world, as houseless as——”
“Third act; everybody ready!” shouted the call-boy.
I looked about in a bewildered way for my fan and my handkerchief, and went to my place on the stage, saying to myself: “I will not look that way again to-night.”
The third act was known, in theatrical parlance, as the strong act of the play. In it I had to attempt to poison my rival, who had formerly been my beloved friend, and at the very last moment, when the poison was at her very lips, with a strong revulsion of feeling, I had to snatch it away and swallow it myself, and then proceed with the death scene, which naturally followed.
I had kept my promise; I had not looked once toward the stage-box. I had worked myself well into my character again and was doing my best to be it, and not myself. That night I had just reached my half unconscious victim and was cautiously raising the poisoned drink to her lips, when some absolutely outside power dragged my unwilling eyes from her face and left me staring straight into the eyes of the woman “who had been tried for her life”!
The actress beside me wondered what had happened—what I had forgotten! No fly enmeshed in spider’s web was ever held more helplessly than I was held for a moment’s time by that devilish face, leaning from the shadow of the curtained box. Strained and eager, it was white as chalk. The lips were parted—the nostrils quivering—while her thunderous brows frowned fiercely above the cruel eyes that held me! And while I looked, so surely as ever Murder raised its head to look through human eyes, so surely Murder triumphant looked at me through hers!
The actress at my side made a faint movement; the spell was broken! I gave the shuddering cry that belonged to the situation, and raising the glass to my own lips, quickly swallowed the poison, and at the very moment of so doing, from the private box, low, but perfectly distinct, came the contemptuous words: “You fool! You fool!”