“Come, dear lady, this can be no pleasant sight for you;—if you will return to your own room, I will tell you all. I have been on the point of doing so several times, but fear of master’s anger prevented me; and I am old and broken down, and were he to discharge me, might suffer and die from want. Come, lady, ere she awakes. Poor thing; she will soon be dead and far away. She has been very troublesome of late,—I could scarcely manage her; but now she sleeps quietly—the first time in many days.”
I silently contemplated the fitful repose of the madwoman for a moment before going, and in that instant I saw the whole fabric of delusive happiness I had erected on unstable air, shattered to the earth. I gazed on the neglected, cast-off victim of my lord’s caprice, in whose emaciated form and desert mind I saw the records of long mental and bodily suffering.
Pasiphae interrupted my reverie by twitching my robe; and, after she had arranged the light on the antique mantel-piece, and adjusted her window drapery, taking my lamp in her hand, we left the salon, locking the door upon her insane ward.
The outer door of the anti-chamber she also locked; and, satisfied that if awaking she could not follow us, I returned to my chamber, and overwhelmed with sickness of the soul, threw myself despairingly into a chair, and burying my face in my hands wept bitterly. I felt disappointed—heartbroken;—disappointed that the man in whom I had centred all my hopes, should so utterly have ruined them;—heartbroken at the melancholy sight I had seen. Sobbing like a child I sat and wept, forgetful of my own identity, or Pasiphae’s presence. At length my grief in a slight degree abated, and wiping my eyes, I looked up and perceived the poor old woman sorrowfully looking at me.
“I know, dear Lady Genevra, how sad you feel at this proof of your husband’s infidelity; and sorry am I that you should have come to those rooms and seen my poor charge,” said Pasiphae; and sympathy almost rendered her voice sweet, and almost metamorphosed that weatherbeaten face into one of youth and beauty.
“How long has she been insane?” I asked, my voice almost choked with sobs.
“This autumn coming will be two years.”
“Who was she? how came she here?”
“She was always called the Lady Isodore, that is the only name by which I ever knew her. Four years ago master brought her here one night in a fine carriage, and commanded us to treat her the same as if she were our lawful lady: we always did so, and she ruled the household: master seemed very fond of her; and, although he never took her travelling with him, and no one visited her, yet her great love for him appeared to supply the place of all other society. Two years after she came, he seemed to grow tired of her, and they often had furious quarrels; one night, in a difficulty of this sort, forgetting himself, he struck her violently with the butt end of a pistol he held in his hand; she fell upon the floor, and when revived, from that hour was mad. In vain did my unhappy master use every endeavor to restore her: reason had fled—never to return. Since then she has been sometimes wild and gay, sometimes sad—as this evening you saw her. Master, at first, was nearly mad himself with remorse and despair; but, after a while, he recovered from his grief; and, having fixed those rooms up for her, consigned her to my care, and no longer troubled himself about her. From habit I have acquired great influence over her; and even in her wildest moods she will obey me. I think, dear lady, that crime will always meet its just reward, even here on earth; and when I look at master sometimes, I think within myself, ‘the hour of retribution for thy sin will surely come some day.’”