van Lowe. But, as soon as Emilie felt the touch of Constance' fingers, she began to moan anew and opened her eyes:
"Oh, Auntie, Auntie, you're a dear, you're a dear! You never, never asked me!"
"Perhaps it will be better to leave her now, Mamma," whispered Addie.
Constance left the room, promising to remain within call with Adeline.
Emilie lay on the bed, her eyes staring straight before her, as though she still beheld all the horror of the past; and she went on moaning in fear and pain:
"Addie, Addie, it was Eduard . . . it was Eduard who murdered Henri. . . . Oh, nobody knows, nobody knows! . . . Uncle and Aunt never asked me. . . . People at the Hague say that it was I who made Eduard unhappy, that that is why he has gone away, disappeared. . . . Perhaps I did, perhaps I did make him unhappy. . . . I don't know, I don't know. . . . You see, I didn't know what I was doing when I married Eduard. I thought . . . I thought it would be all right, I thought I cared for him . . . Ssh, Addie, don't tell anybody, but I cared for Henri, for my brother, only. I swear, it was all quite beautiful what he and I felt for each other; there was never anything between us, never anything to be ashamed of! . . . But my life, Addie, my poor life, oh, my poor little life was quite wrecked, because I did not know, because I felt so strangely, because I fought against the common things of life, against my marriage, against my husband, and because all that was stronger than what I tried to do, what I myself did not really know, nor Henri, nor Henri either! . . ."
The heart-broken lamentation over her life
