fought for their cattle, treated them as cattle, and kept them in their place, never dreaming of endowing them with such strong virtues as truth and honor! If women were pure and true, then the lost happiness of the world might return to it, but the majority of them are like you—liars—ever pretending to be what they are not. I may do what I choose with you, you say? torture you, kill you, brand you with the name of outcast in the public sight, and curse you before Heaven, if I will only love you! All this is melodramatic speech, and I never cared for melodrama at any time. I shall neither kill you, brand you, curse you, nor love you; I shall simply—call your husband!"
After further passages of this description, concluding
with some passes with a dagger, the scene
ends, the hidden but listening husband coming
forth and blessing the friend for his upright conduct.
The inevitable follows. Lady Sibyl commits
suicide; and the husband, finding the corpse seated
in a chair before a mirror, carries out a plan for an
awful midnight interview with the dead, turning on
a blaze of lamps, and sitting down there in the
death-chamber to read a document left by his wife,
in which she gives a pitiful picture of the training
that has made her character so repellent. She
describes, in a remarkable and appalling letter, of
which an extract follows, how the death-giving
poison is taken and the agonizing thoughts of the
last moments.
