Her pencil stopped; her eyes wandered off to the child with a charming expression of interest. 'Well, Lucy,' she said, 'how d'ye do?' Then she remembered business again, and returned to her receipt. When I took it across the counter, an important line in the address of my letter was left out in the copy. Thanks to Lucy. Now a man in the same position would not have seen Lucy--he would have been too closely occupied with what he was about at the moment. There is the whole difference between the mental constitution of the sexes, which no legislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts! What does it matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moral qualities which are the true adornments of humanity. Be content--oh, my mistaken sisters, be content with that!"
He twisted his chair around toward the stove. It was useless to dispute the question with him, even if I had felt inclined to do so. He absorbed himself in his stew-pan.
I looked about me in the room.
The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs by the pictures in the hall was displayed again here. The photographs hanging on the wall represented the various forms of madness taken from the life. The plaster casts ranged on the shelf opposite were casts (after death) of the heads of famous murderers. A frightful little skeleton of a woman hung in a cupboard, behind a glazed door, with this cynical inscription placed above the skull: "Behold the scaffolding on which beauty is built!" In a corresponding cupboard, with the door wide open, there hung in loose folds a shirt (as I took it to be) of chamois leather. Touching it (and finding it to be far softer than any chamois leather that my fingers had ever felt before), I disarranged the folds, and disclosed a ticket pinned among them, describing the thing in these horrid lines: "Skin of a French Marquis, tanned in the Revolution of Ninety-three. Who says the nobility are not good for something? They make good leather."
After this last specimen of my host's taste in curiosities, I pursued my investigation no further. I returned to my chair, and waited for the truffles.
After a brief interval, the voice of the poet-painter-composer-and-cook summoned me back to the alcove.
The gas was out. The stew-pan and its accompaniments had vanished. On the marble slab were two plates, two napkins, two rolls of bread, and a dish, with another napkin in it, on which reposed two quaint little black balls. Miserrimus Dexter, regarding me with a smile of benevolent interest, put one of the balls on my plate, and took the other himself. "Compose yourself, Mrs. Valeria," he said. "This is an epoch in your life. Your first Truffle! Don't touch it with the knife. Use the fork alone. And--pardon me; this is most important--eat slowly."
I followed my instructions, and assumed an enthusiasm which I honestly confess I did not feel. I privately thought the new vegetable a great deal too rich, and in other respects quite unworthy of the fuss that had been made about it. Miserrimus Dexter lingered and languished over his truffles, and sipped his wonderful Burgundy, and sang his own praises as a cook until I was really almost mad with impatience to return to the real object of my visit. In the reckless state of mind which this feeling produced, I abruptly reminded my host that he was wasting our time, by the most dangerous question that I could possibly put to him.
"Mr. Dexter," I said, "have you seen anything lately of Mrs. Beauly?"
The easy sense of enjoyment expressed in his face left it at those rash words, and went out like a suddenly extinguished light. That furtive distrust of me which I had already noticed instantly made itself felt again in his manner and in his voice.
"Do you know Mrs. Beauly?" he asked.
"I only know her," I answered, "by what I have read of her in the Trial."
He was not satisfied with that reply.
"You must have an interest of some sort in Mrs. Beauly," he said, "or you would not have asked me about her. Is it the interest of a friend, or the interest of an enemy?"
Rash as I might be, I was not quite reckless enough yet to meet that plain question by an equally plain reply. I saw enough in his face to warn me to be careful with him before it was too late.
"I can only answer you in one way," I rejoined. "I must return to a subject which is very painful to you--the subject of the Trial."
"Go on," he said, with one of his grim outbursts of humor. "Here I am at your mercy--a martyr at the stake. Poke the fire! poke the fire!"
"I am only an ignorant woman," I resumed, "and I dare say I am quite wrong; but there is one part of my husband's trial which doesn't at all satisfy me. The defense set up for him seems to me to have been a complete mistake."
"A complete mistake?" he repeated. "Strange language, Mrs. Valeria, to say the least of it!" He tried to speak lightly; he took up his goblet of wine; but I could see that I had produced an effect on him. His hand trembled as it carried the wine to his lips.
"I don't doubt that Eustace's first wife really asked him to buy the arsenic," I continued. "I don't doubt that she used it secretly to improve her complexion. But w hat I do not believe is that she died of an overdose of the poison, taken by mistake."
He put back the goblet of wine on the table near him so unsteadily that he spilled the greater part of it. For a moment his eyes met mine, then looked down again.
"How do you believe she died?" he inquired, in tones so low that I could barely hear them.
"By the hand of a poisoner," I answered.
He made a movement as if he were about to start up in the chair, and sank back again, seized, apparently, with a sudden faintness.
"Not my husband!" I hastened to add. "You know that I am satisfied of his innocence."
I saw him shudder. I saw his hands fasten their hold convulsively on the arms of his chair.
"Who poisoned her?" he asked, still lying helplessly back in the chair.
At the critical moment my courage failed me. I was afraid to tell him in what direction my suspicions pointed.
"Can't you guess?" I said.
There was a pause. I supposed him to be seceretly following his own train of thought. It was not for long. On a sudden he started up in his chair. The prostration which had possessed him appeared to vanish in an instant. His eyes recovered their wild light; his hands were steady again; his color was brighter than ever. Had he been pondering over the secret of my interest in Mrs. Beauly? and had he guessed? He had!
"Answer on your word of honor!" he cried. "Don't attempt to deceive me! Is it a woman?"
"It is."
"What is the first letter of her name? Is it one of the first three letters of the alphabet?"
"Yes."
"B?"
"Yes."
"Beauly?"
"Beauly."
He threw his hands up above his head, and burst into a frantic fit of laughter.
"I have lived long enough!" he broke out, wildly. "At last I have discovered one other person in the world who sees it as plainly as I do. Cruel Mrs. Valeria! why did you torture me? Why didn't you own it before?"
"What!" I exclaimed, catching the infection of his excitement. "Are your ideas my ideas? Is it possible that you suspect Mrs.