“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your husband found you lying insensible on the floor, with your right hand in the grate and burnt almost to a cinder.’”
Ethel sprang up, threw her arms about the Madame’s neck, and sobbed aloud.
“My poor, poor aunt!” she said when she could speak. “What a dreadful, dreadful thing it was! My heart aches for you! oh, how could you bear it?”
Madame Le Conte returned the caress, then Ethel resumed her seat.
“I could not escape it!” she sighed, “and I felt that it was a just punishment that deprived me of the hand I had used to forge the notices which robbed my sister of her lover.
“Remorse has tortured me horribly many a time since, but I never have resorted to the intoxicating cup to escape its stings.
“I gave up society from the time of my accident. I could not bear the thought of exposing myself to the curious gaze and questioning of common acquaintances or of strangers.
“My husband pitied me very much, and never once said to me, ‘It is your own fault,’ as well he might. Finding how I shrank from meeting any one I knew, he proposed removing to this city, where we were entirely unknown, and I was glad to come. It is now ten years since he died, leaving me everything he possessed.”