"Madame, at least pity him."
"Pity him? If you wish pity, pray let it be bestowed on my child. Poor victim of this odious union, what nights and days have I passed near her! What tears have not her misfortunes wrung from me!"
"But her father suffers from the same unmerited afflictions."
"Yet it is that father who has condemned her to a sickly infancy, a withering youth, and, if she should survive, to a life of isolation and misery, for she will never marry. Ah, no! I love her too well to expose her to the chance of one day's weeping over her own offspring, similarly smitten, as I weep over her. I have suffered too much from treachery, to render myself guilty of, or an accomplice in, such wickedness!"
"You are right; the vengeance of your mother-in-law was really atrocious. But patience, and perhaps in your turn you will be avenged," said Rodolph, after a moment's reflection.
"What do you mean, my lord?" inquired Clémence, astonished at the change in his voice.
"I have generally had the satisfaction of seeing those whom I have known to be wicked most severely punished," he replied, in a voice that made Clémence shudder. "But the day after this unhappy event what did your husband say?"
"He confessed, with singular candour, that his two former marriages had been broken off in consequence of the families becoming acquainted with the secret of his fearful malady. Thus, then, after having been twice rejected, he had the shameful, the unmanly courage, to drag a third poor victim into the abyss of misery the kind intervention of friends had preserved the others from. And this is what the world calls a gentleman and a man of honour!"
"For one so good, so full of pity to others, yours are harsh words."
"Because I feel I have been unworthily treated. M. d'Harville easily penetrated the girlish openness of my character; why, then, did he not trust to my sympathy and generosity of feeling, and tell me the whole truth?"