His unmistakable step resounded under the vaulted corridor. At the moment that the Count turned the handle of his wife`s door, he fancied he could hear the door of the closet I spoke of close; but when he entered Madame de Merret was alone before the fireplace. The husband thought ingenuously that Rosalie was in the closet, yet a suspicion that jangled in his ear put him on his guard. He looked at his wife and saw in her eyes I know not what wild and hunted expres¬sion.
“You are very late,” she said. Her habitually pure, sweet voice seemed changed to him.
Monsieur de Merret did not reply, for at that moment Rosalie entered. It was a thunderbolt for him. He strode about the room, passing from one window to the other, with mechanical motion and folded arms.
“Have you heard bad news, or are you unwell?” inquired his wife timidly, while Rosalie undressed her.
He kept silent.
“You can leave me,” said Madame de Merret to her maid; “I will put my hair in curl papers myself.”
From the expression of her husband`s face she foresaw trouble, and wished to be alone with him. When Rosalie had gone, or was supposed to have gone (for she stayed in the corridor for a few minutes), Monsieur de Merret came and stood in front of his wife, and said coldly to her: “Madame, there is someone in your closet!” She looked calmly at her husband and replied simply:
“No, sir.”
Monsieur de Merret
This answer was heartrending to Monsieur de Merret; he did not believe in it. Yet his wife had never appeared to him purer or more saintly than at that moment. He rose to open the closet door; Madame de Merret took his hand, looked at him with an expression of melan¬choly, and said in a voice that betrayed singular emotion:
“If you find no one there, remember this, all will be over between us!” The extraordinary dignity of his wife`s manner restored the Count`s profound esteem for her, and inspired him with one of those resolutions that only lack a vaster stage to become immortal.
“No,” said he, “Josephine, I will not go there. In either case it would separate us forever. Hear me, I know how pure you are at heart, and that your life is a holy one. You would not commit a mortal sin to save your life.”
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