from me. I saw the subtle change from affection to indifference, from indifference to fear, from fear to disgust, and then to horror. She was kind to me still, from a sense of duty, meek, obedient, a gentle yielding wife. But I saw her shiver at my approach; I felt her hand grow cold in mine; I found repulsion instead of warm confiding love. Nor was I allowed long to remain in ignorance as to the cause of the change. A kind friend of mine was also an acquaintance of Maucroix. He informed me of the young man's passion for Marie, of his having sworn to win her at any cost—yes, even at the cost of the coronet which he had the power to bestow upon her. He was independent, rich, able to do as he liked with his life. He was one of the handsomest young men in Paris, and was said to be the most fascinating. And I was a hard-headed man of business, anxious, brain-weary, long past the flush of hopeful youth. Could I wonder that Marie turned from me to her young adorer? I gave her all credit for having struggled against her infatuation, for having been true to her duty as a wife even to the last; but she had ceased to love me, and the day was at hand when the barriers would be broken, when that impassioned woman's heart of hers, that fond impulsive nature, whose every pulse I knew, would yield at a breath, and she whom I worshipped would fall to blackest depths of sin.
"Then, like Othello, I called this deed which I had to do, a sacrifice, and not a murder.
"You have heard the story of my crime from the lips of your friend here. He has unravelled the tangled skein with a wonderful ingenuity. Yes, it was I who laid those roses on my victim's grave. I stayed in Paris long enough to save appearances, the man Georges being supposed to have fled to the utmost ends of the earth. I went about among my fellow-men on the Bourse and in the clubs, and heard them discuss the murder of Marie Prévol. Once I was told, by a man who had met me as Georges, of my likeness to the supposed murderer; but those few chosen friends who had known me as Georges were not men to be met on the Bourse or in financial circles, and I had always eschewed mixed society. My identity with the murderer was never suspected. I saved my fortune, wound up my affairs, and left Paris, as I thought for ever, went forth from that accursed city as I would have gone out of hell. I came back to England with the brand of Cain, not upon my brow, but upon my heart. I wandered in a purposeless fashion from place to place, possessed of a restless devil. I had my office in London, where I tried to find a distraction in the excitement of speculation, the financial strategy which had once been my delight. Vain the effort. I was no happier in London than I had been in Paris, within a few minutes walk of the house that had sheltered my wife, the secret home in which I had been so happy.
