In spite of the soil that obscured the face, I knew it. The dead man was Martelli!
I gazed upon this awful spectacle with fascinated eyes; then my senses forsook me and I fell to the earth.
For three weeks I lay as one that is dead. The raging fever that consumed me brought me to the brink of the grave; I was snatched from the jaws of death by a miracle.
When I awoke from my delirium I was at Elmore Court. The first object my eyes opened on was Mrs. Williams. With consciousness returned memory. I inquired for my wife. The entrance of the doctor saved her from replying. He forbade me to speak, on pain of a relapse. Nature, utterly weakened by illness, succumbed to sleep. My slumber was protracted through twenty-four hours; and when I awoke I was convalescent.
It was then I learnt that my wife was dead. Her death had occurred three days after I was taken ill.
Towards the end the delirium had left her. Reason had regained its power, as though the soul, animated by the approach of death and the promise of liberty, had shaken off the foul hand of madness. She had asked for me; they told her I was ill. She would not believe them; she declared that I had left her. They assured her that I was in the next room; but she remained incredulous. A nurse had been summoned to watch her, while Mrs. Williams tended me. On the night of her death, the nurse having fallen asleep, she crept from her bed, stole to my room, and was found by Mrs. Williams on her knees by my side, with her arm round my neck, her cheek against mine, dead.
It was remarked, that after consciousness and reason had returned, she did not speak of the crime she had committed, nor did her conversation indicate the memory of it. Whence it was concluded that she died not knowing what, in her madness, she had done.
When my health was restored, my evidence was taken with respect to Martelli's death. The inquiry was purely formal. During my illness the police had vigilantly investigated the affair, and from Geraldine's diary and letters, coupled with the testimony of Mrs. Williams and the inquiries they had prosecuted into Martelli's career, had established the necessary evidence. From those inquiries I gathered the following particulars.
Martelli's real name was Forli. He had been a teacher of Italian at Gore House Academy, where he had met Geraldine, whom he eventually induced to elope with him. Her account in her diary of the life she had led with him was in every respect accurate. But you will remember she had omitted the events of a year, and that year was now accounted for. Forli had left her, to live with some abandoned woman, who, after a few months' intimacy, avenged Geraldine by plundering him of his savings and leaving him. It was supposed that he had heard of his wife having inherited her grandmother's property; but his hatred of her, which he never scrupled to confess, coupled with his conviction that had he followed her she would not have hesitated to commence proceedings for divorce, which would have professionally ruined him, effectually served to keep him from her.