A few evenings later the Countess Guenevere stood alone in her ownboudoir in her Baden suite; she was going to dine with an Archduchess ofRussia, and the splendid jewels of her House glittered through the blackshower of her laces, and crowned her beautiful glossy hair, her delicateimperial head. In her hands was a letter--oddly written in pencil on aleaf torn out of a betting book, but without a tremor or a change inthe writing itself. And as she stood a shiver shook her frame; in thesolitude of her lighted and luxurious chamber her cheek grew pale, hereyes grew dim.
"To refute the charge," ran the last words of what was at best but afragment, "I must have broken my promise to you, and have compromisedyour name. Keeping silence myself, but letting the trial take place,law-inquiries so execrable and so minute, would soon have traced throughothers that I was with you that evening. To clear myself I must haveattainted your name with public slander, and drawn the horrible ordealon you before the world. Let me be thought guilty. It matters little.Henceforth I shall be dead to all who know me, and my ruin would haveexiled me without this. Do not let an hour of grief for me mar yourpeace, my dearest; think of me with no pain, Beatrice; only with somememory of our past love. I have not strength yet to say--forget me; andyet,--if it be for your happiness,--blot out from your remembrance allthought of what we have been to one another; all thought of me and of mylife, save to remember now and then that I was dear to you."
The words grew indistinct before her sight, they touched the heart ofthe world-worn coquette, of the victorious sovereign, to the core;she trembled greatly as she read them. For--in her hands was his fate.Though no hint of this was breathed in his farewell letter, she knewthat with a word she could clear him, free him, and call him back fromexile and shame, give him once more honor and guiltlessness in the sightof the world. With a word she could do this; his life was in the balancethat she held as utterly as though it were now hers to sign, or todestroy, his death-warrant. It rested with her to speak and to say hehad no guilt.
But to do this she must sacrifice herself. She stood mute, irresolute,a shudder running through her till her diamonds shook in the light; theheavy tears stole slowly down, one by one, and fell upon the blurredand blackened paper; her heart ached with an exceeding bitterness.Then shudderingly still, and as though there were a coward crime in theaction, her hand unclosed and let the letter fall into the spirit flameof a silver lamp, burning by; the words that were upon it merited abetter fate, a fonder cherishing, but--they would have compromised her.She let them fall, and burn, and wither. With them she gave up his lifeto its burden of shame, to its fate of exile.
She would hear his crime condemned, and her lips would not open; shewould hear his name aspersed, and her voice would not be raised; shewould know that he dwelt in misery, or died under foreign sunsunhonored and unmourned, while tongues around her would babble of hisdisgrace--and she would keep her peace.
She loved him--yes; but she loved better the dignity in which the worldheld her, and the diamonds from which the law would divorce her if theirlove were known.
She sacrificed him for her reputation and her jewels; the choice wasthoroughly a woman's.