“You don’t look well of late, Genevra; your face has lost its freshness; your eyes their brightness.”
“I feel altered externally and internally.”
“I think I am something changed myself within the last year. Let me see,” said he, reflectively; “yes, this is the anniversary of our marriage:—the year has been an eventful one to me.” He seemed to expect some remark, and I determined to touch him to the quick.
“Yes,” I replied, as if unconsciously; “it is five months since Isodore died: how sad her death-bed was!”
His face flushed, and he exclaimed fiercely:
“Why do you speak of that woman? why do you remind me of her? She is dead; well, let her rest in peace, and cease to torment me with recollections of her.”
But I wished him to hear of her. I thought it only an act of justice to her injured memory, and I continued quietly:
“You feel, then, no remorse for your past conduct toward her, monsieur? no regret, yet she loved you much; and if she erred, it may have been through unhappy circumstances, or through an overweening attachment to you.”
“She sinned through nothing of the sort,” cried he sharply,—“her affair with me was not the only one she ever had. She had been a notorious woman long before I ever saw her. As for the deep regrets you talk of, I feel none. I consider I acted honorably in taking care of a lunatic, and suffering myself to be frequently annoyed by the antics of a crazy woman. She is better off where she is.”
I saw my husband was impenetrable to any feeling on the subject, and feeling misanthropic myself, I cared not to enter into a wordy war. Relapsing into silence and thought, I sat motionless. One thing I plainly perceived, that he was piqued that I pitied the dead Isodore, and manifested neither anger, contempt, nor hatred for her memory; he would rather have seen me furiously jealous, retaining the recollection of her error, and hating her name. But I had lost all hatred for anything and everything, and was sinking into a listless apathy.