“This time the comtesse ordered her daughter to go to bed and never to speak again in this manner, so unbecoming in the mouth of a child toward her mother.
“Yvette's answer to this was: 'I give you a month to reflect. If, at the end of that month, we have not changed our way of living, I will kill myself, since there is no other honorable issue left to my life.'
“And she left the room.
“At the end of a month the Comtesse Samoris had resumed her usual entertainments, as though nothing had occurred. One day, under the pretext that she had a bad toothache, Yvette purchased a few drops of chloroform from a neighboring chemist. The next day she purchased more, and every time she went out she managed to procure small doses of the narcotic. She filled a bottle with it.
“One morning she was found in bed, lifeless and already quite cold, with a cotton mask soaked in chloroform over her face.
“Her coffin was covered with flowers, the church was hung in white. There was a large crowd at the funeral ceremony.
“Ah! well, if I had known—but you never can know—I would have married that girl, for she was infernally pretty.”
“And what became of the mother?”
“Oh! she shed a lot of tears over it. She has only begun to receive visits again for the past week.”
“And what explanation is given of the girl's death?”