"No; I will see myself so to my dying hour. It will be my punishment."
At her friend's, so to speak, posthumous coquetries, Mme. Daubrel smiled courageously, but she could not without grief hear her speak of her mother, for if Lise still hoped to soon receive a visit from the general's wife, and attributed her silence to ignorance of her daughter's condition, Marthe knew that the ex-Countess Barineff was acquainted with the facts. Indeed, she had written to her at Carlsbad, where the newspapers had mentioned that she was with her husband, and the answer had been sharp and ill-natured, proving that she was far from having pardoned her daughter, as the latter might have reasonably hoped in view of the terms on which she had parted from her mother at Pampeln.
"I am, of course, concerned about Lise's poor state of health, but I am sure she will soon be better, if she will forget her second husband as she forgot her first. When I come to Paris at the beginning of the winter, I shall find her as well as ever, and, perhaps, for all one can say, ready to be divorced again.
"You can tell her, in the meantime, that I have lately had a good account of my grandchildren, Alexander and Tekla, to whom Vera Soublaieff continues to be an excellent mother."
Marthe was careful not to read these sad lines to Mme. Paul Meyrin; she thought it better to let her fancy that the general's wife was ignorant of her illness, and to say, by way of reassuring her, that she had heard from St. Petersburg that Mme. Podoi was coming to Paris in or about November.
Mme. Daubrel had done more than this.
Acting in concert with Dumesnil, she had written to Prince Olsdorf a letter describing Lise's position, the disgraceful conduct of her husband, the desertion and loneliness in which she was living; then another to say that the doctors could give no hope of the unhappy young woman; she had but some months, perhaps only a few weeks to live, and it would be generous to let her embrace her children before she died.
Well acquainted with all the circumstances prior to the divorce of her friend, Marthe ended her second letter to Pierre Olsdorf thus:
"Prince,—I have lived for a long time in friendship with the woman who had the honor to bear your name, and I swear to you, in the presence of God, that, for three years, she has cruelly expiated the sin she was guilty of toward you. A wife without her husband, a mother without her children, she deserves your pity. Her mother herself has deserted her. There is barely time left for you to pardon her.
"You could have inflicted on her no more dreadful punishment than to join her with the wretch who made her forget her duty. Monsieur Paul Meyrin has avenged you hatefully. He knows his wife is dying, and he remains in Rome with that woman, that Sarah Lamber, who will not let him come and close the eyes of the woman whose heart she has broken and whose life she has ruined. Will you dare to refuse her the last kisses of her children?"