Madame de Hansfeld looked at her husband with increasing surprise, she could not credit, she could not believe what she had heard.
"Now, sir," she said, recalling her recollection, "all your strange caprices, your singular bursts are explained. This odious accusation has, at least, the merit of being precise, and my justification will be as easy."
"You pretend then——"
"To justify myself? Yes, most assuredly, and I request that you will listen to me."
"Your audacity confounds me. There was a time when I might have been your dupe—but now——"
"Now, sir, you will be pleased to tell me the grounds on which your accusation rests; what are your proofs? I will refute them one by one. There is no logic so potent as truth."
M. de Hansfeld, confounded at this assurance, looked in his turn at his wife with unfeigned and vast astonishment. She was so calm, she seemed to anticipate with so much innocence those explanations, which a guilty conscience would have dreaded, that his doubts all returned more strongly than ever.
"What, madame!" exclaimed he, "do you deny that one evening at Trieste, after a painful dispute, you endeavoured to get rid of me by throwing into a cup of milk, which had been brought for me, a poison so violent, that a spaniel, to which I was greatly attached, died the moment after he had drunk it?"
"I—I poison?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, with horror, "why, who could—great God!—have inspired you with such suspicions? How have I deserved them? How, since then do you suppose me capable of such a crime?"
"That crime was not the only one, madame!"