"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the game in your own hands, my lady, and can send them all packing."
The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had seized the arm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under threat of the law (not to speak of instant personal chastisement) the girl had confessed that both this letter and others had been written by our housekeeper under the inspiration of her mistress.
Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letter and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me with Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the forthcoming entertainment.
Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out of my maid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away in a drawer Alma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he was leaving London by the early train the following morning and would arrive at Blackwater at half-past three in the afternoon.
"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store for him! But of course you've told him already, haven't you? . . . No? Ah, I see, you've been saving it all up to tell him face to face. Oh, happy, happy you!"
It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come. There was no possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had been holding me in the net of my sin, so that I could not fly away.
At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day fixed for the reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my husband at Blackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few minutes afterwards I heard my husband's voice in the hall. I thought he would come up to me directly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt to go down. When, after a while, I asked what had become of him, I was told that he was in the library with Alma, and that they were alone.
Two hours passed.
To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly my husband had behaved to me. I remembered that he had married me from the most mercenary motives; that he had paid off his mistress with the money that came through me; that he had killed by cruelty the efforts I had made to love him; that he had humiliated me by gross infidelities committed on my honeymoon. I recalled the scenes in Rome, the scenes in Paris, and the insults I had received under my own roof.
It was all in vain. Whether God means it that the woman's fault in breaking her marriage vows (whatever her sufferings and excuse) shall be greater than that of the man I do not know. I only know that I was trembling like a prisoner before her judge when, being dressed for dinner and waiting for the sound of the bell, I heard my husband's footsteps approach my door.