"Yes," stammered the frightened woman.
"Did you do it?"
No answer.
"You did not do it."
"I was so afraid of Hartwich that I went up-stairs again," Bertha confessed with hesitation.
"And so,--" Leuthold's chest heaved, his breath came heavily, and he clenched his hands convulsively, "and so it is your fault that Hartwich has disinherited us and left all his property to Ernestine." His face grew still paler, his slender figure tottered, he grasped at a chair for support, and fell fainting upon the ground.
"Good God!" shrieked Bertha, shaking the prostrate man violently, "the whole property? tell me, the whole property? Oh, you miserable man, what folly to fall into such spasms! Speak, and tell me whether we have nothing at all, or what we have!"
Leuthold slowly raised his head. Bertha carried, more than supported, him to the sofa. She brought some eau-de-cologne and poured it over his head so that it ran into his eyes. He uttered an exclamation of pain, and tried to wipe away the burning fluid from his eyes. "Are you trying to deprive me of my eyesight?" he groaned, and, when the pain was relieved, he sat in a dejected attitude, staring into vacancy.
"For mercy's sake, speak!" cried Bertha. "You can, at least, open your mouth. No legacy? Not an annuity?"
Leuthold looked at his unfeeling wife with an expression that, in spite of herself, drove the blood to her cheeks. There was something indescribable in the look,--a mixture of the pity and contempt with which one contemplates the body of a suicide.