It was true: how was pardon possible while Menko lived?
No word more was spoken by either until they reached the villa; then Prince Zilah shook Yanski’s hand and retired to his chamber. Lighting his lamp, he took out and read and reread, for the hundredth time perhaps, certain letters—letters not addressed to him—those letters which Varhely had handed him, and with which Michel Menko had practically struck him the day of his marriage.
Andras had kept them, reading them over at times with an eager desire for further suffering, drinking in this species of poison to irritate his mental pain as he would have injected morphine to soothe a physical one. These letters caused him a sensation analogous to that which gives repose to opium-eaters, a cruel shock at first, sharp as the prick of a knife, then, the pain slowly dying away, a heavy stupor.
The whole story was revived in these letters of Marsa to Menko:—all the ignorant, credulous love of the young girl for Michel, then her enthusiasm for love itself, rather than for the object of her love, and then, again—for Menko had reserved nothing, but sent all together—the bitter contempt of Marsa, deceived, for the man who had lied to her.
There were, in these notes, a freshness of sentiment and a youthful credulity which produced the impression of a clear morning in early spring, all the frankness and faith of a mind ignorant of evil and destitute of guile; then, in the later ones, the spontaneous outburst of a heart which believes it has given itself forever, because it thinks it has encountered incorruptible loyalty and undying devotion.
As he read them over, Andras shook with anger against the two who had deceived him; and also, and involuntarily, he felt an indefined, timid pity for the woman who had trusted and been deceived—a pity he immediately drove away, as if he were afraid of himself, afraid of forgiving.
“What did Varhely mean by speaking to me of pardon?” he thought. “Am I yet avenged?”
It was this constant hope that the day would come when justice would be meted out to Menko’s treachery. The letters proved conclusively that Menko had been Marsa’s lover; but they proved, at the same time, that Michel had taken advantage of her innocence and ignorance, and lied outrageously in representing himself as free, when he was already bound to another woman.
All night long Andras Zilah sat there, inflicting torture upon himself, and taking a bitter delight in his own suffering; engraving upon his memory every word of love written by Marsa to Michel, as if he felt the need of fresh pain to give new strength to his hatred.
The next morning at breakfast, Varhely astonished him by announcing that he was going away.