LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter XXVII

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      All M. Lecoq’s anticipations were realized. Laurence was not dead, and her letter to her parents was an odious trick. It was really she who lived in the house as Mme. Wilson. How had the lovely young girl, so much beloved by the old justice, come to such a dreadful extremity? The logic of life, alas, fatally enchains all our determinations to each other. Often an indifferent action, little wrongful in itself, is the beginning of an atrocious crime. Each of our new resolutions depends upon those which have preceded it, and is their logical sequence just as the sum-total is the product of the added figures. Woe to him who, being seized with a dizziness at the brink of the abyss, does not fly as fast as possible, without turning his head; for soon, yielding to an irresistible attraction, he approaches, braves the danger, slips, and is lost. Whatever thereafter he does or attempts he will roll down the faster, until he reaches the very bottom of the gulf.

      Tremorel had by no means the implacable character of an assassin; he was only feeble and cowardly; yet he had committed abominable crimes. All his guilt came from the first feeling of envy with which he regarded Sauvresy, and which he had not taken the pains to subdue. Laurence, when, on the day that she became enamoured of Tremorel, she permitted him to press her hand, and kept it from her mother, was lost. The hand-pressure led to the pretence of suicide in order to fly with her lover. It might also lead to infanticide.

      Poor Laurence, when she was left alone by Hector’s departure to the Faubourg St. Germain, on receiving M. Lecoq’s letter, began to reflect upon the events of the past year. How unlooked-for and rapidly succeeding they had been! It seemed to her that she had been whirled along in a tempest, without a second to think or act freely. She asked herself if she were not a prey to some hideous nightmare, and if she should not presently awake in her pretty maidenly chamber at Orcival. Was it really she who was there in a strange house, dead to everyone, leaving behind a withered memory, reduced to live under a false name, without family or friends henceforth, or anyone in the world to help her feebleness, at the mercy of a fugitive like herself, who was free to break to-morrow the bonds of caprice which to-day bound him to her? Was it she, too, who was about to become a mother, and found herself suffering from the excessive misery of blushing for that maternity which is the pride of pure young wives? A thousand memories of her past life flocked through her brain and cruelly revived her despair. Her heart sank as she thought of her old friendships, of her mother, her sister, the pride of her innocence, and the pure joys of the home fireside.

      As she half reclined on a divan in Hector’s library, she wept freely. She bewailed her life, broken at twenty, her lost youth, her vanished, once radiant hopes, the world’s esteem, and her own self-respect, which she should never recover.

      Of a sudden the door was abruptly opened.

      Laurence thought it was Hector returned, and she hastily rose, passing her handkerchief across her face to try to conceal her tears.

      A man whom she did not know stood upon the threshold, respectfully bowing. She was afraid, for Tremorel had said to her many times within the past two days, “We are pursued; let us hide well;” and though it seemed to her that she had nothing to fear, she trembled without knowing why.

      “Who are you?” she asked, haughtily, “and who has admitted you here? What do you want?”

      M. Lecoq left nothing to chance or inspiration; he foresaw everything, and regulated affairs in real life as he would the scenes in a theatre. He expected this very natural indignation and these questions, and was prepared for them. The only reply he made was to step one side, thus revealing M. Plantat behind him.

      Laurence was so much overcome on recognizing her old friend, that, in spite of her resolution, she came near falling.

      “You!” she stammered; “you!”

      The old justice was, if possible, more agitated than Laurence. Was that really his Laurence there before him? Grief had done its work so well that she seemed old.

      “Why did you seek for me?” she resumed. “Why add another grief to my life? Ah, I told Hector that the letter he dictated to me would not be believed. There are misfortunes for which death is the only refuge.”

      M. Plantat was about to reply, but Lecoq was determined to take the lead in the interview.

      “It is not you, Madame, that we seek,” said he, “but Monsieur de Tremorel.”

      “Hector! And why, if you please? Is he not free?”

      M. Lecoq hesitated before shocking the poor girl, who had been but too credulous in trusting to a scoundrel’s oaths of fidelity. But he thought that the cruel truth is less harrowing than the suspense of intimations.

      “Monsieur de Tremorel,” he answered, “has committed a great crime.”

      “He! You lie, sir.”

      The detective sorrowfully shook his head.

      “Unhappily I have told you the truth. Monsieur de Tremorel murdered his wife on Wednesday night. I am a detective and I have a warrant to arrest him.”

      He thought this terrible charge would overwhelm Laurence; he was mistaken. She was thunderstruck, but she stood firm. The crime horrified her, but it did not seem to her entirely improbable, knowing as she did the hatred with which Hector was inspired by Bertha.

      “Well, perhaps he did,” cried she, sublime in her energy and despair; “I am his accomplice, then—arrest me.”

      This cry, which seemed to proceed from the most senseless passion, amazed the old justice, but did not surprise M. Lecoq.

      “No, Madame,” he resumed, “you are not this man’s accomplice. Besides, the murder of his wife is the least of his crimes. Do you know why he did not marry you? Because in concert with Bertha, he poisoned Monsieur Sauvresy, who saved his life and was his best friend. We have the proof of it.”

      This was more than poor Laurence could bear; she staggered and fell upon a sofa. But she did not doubt the truth of what M. Lecoq said. This terrible revelation tore away the veil which, till then, had hidden the past from her. The poisoning of Sauvresy explained all Hector’s conduct, his position, his fears, his promises, his lies, his hate, his recklessness, his marriage, his flight. Still she tried not to defend him, but to share the odium of his crimes.

      “I knew it,” she stammered, in a voice broken by sobs, “I knew it all.”

      The old justice was in despair.

      “How you love him, poor child!” murmured he.

      This mournful exclamation restored

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