"Well! first reflecting on the frail health of your husband, I said to myself, M. de Hansfeld may die—that would not afflict me; if his life depended on me, I should let him perish. Then I have advanced even farther; I have—but no, no—I dare not tell you this—no, not to you; I should overwhelm you with horror. Oh! cursed be the day when for the first time that thought came across my brain."
And De Morville hid his face in his hands.
The last words he had pronounced were destined long to find an echo in Paula's heart.
She was at once alarmed, and yet almost happy at the strange moral complicity with which De Morville, until then so generous and noble-minded, shared her homicidal wishes towards the prince. In this complete overthrow of the principles of the man by whom she was adored she saw a fresh proof of the influence she exercised.
Yet, by one of those contradictions, one of those feelings of devotion so common in the female mind, Madame de Hansfeld promised herself to do all in her power to remove henceforth and for ever such thoughts from De Morville's mind, and that because, perhaps, from that very moment she herself was taking the most criminal resolutions. Whatever might result, she determined that De Morville should never reproach himself hereafter for the wishes that had escaped him in a moment of frenzy.
De Morville's head was pressed in his two hands with agony, when Madame de Hansfeld said to him in a gentle but firm voice,—
"I will have courage for both of us. I will remind you of oaths formerly so binding with you, and which even the very violence of your love ought not to make you forget. Pray, De Morville, be yourself. You allude to fresh sorrows; what are they? Is your mother in worse health?"
"What if she were?"
"Oh! for mercy's sake do not talk thus. Believe me, a woman may be proud to see her influence for a moment superior to the noblest principles; but that is on condition that these principles resume their ascendancy. I should hate myself and you, if, instead of that generous heart which I have so proudly loved, I found now only a selfish and exclusive one. Would that be the proper fruit of our love?"
De Morville shook his head sorrowfully. "Alas! I fear," he said, in a gloomy tone, "I have no longer strength to resist the current which sweeps me along. Nothing of all that I formerly venerated is now strong enough to arrest my course. Your love before every thing! Perish all else!"