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180 sun-ray danced in, as if to show him the way; and there, stretched on a divan, dressed in a foamy, lacy negligée, was his wife.

He looked at her. He knew at once that she was dead; and he bent down to kiss her cold lips.

"Oh, Laetitia, my love, my wife!" he cried in a voice that was a barely audible croak. "Oh, my love—"

Then, suddenly, he drew himself up again. He stood quite still.

For, bending down, he had seen another body—the body of a man—a few feet away.

He looked again at the face of his wife. An ecstatic smile was playing about the cold lips—a smile of love—of desire—

And over there was the body of a man—not a servant come in to warn his mistress when the first rumbling of the earth had shaken the towers of the ancient castle—but a well-dressed man, a gentleman—and between his cramped fingers there was a spray of stephanotis, the sweet-smelling exotic which was his wife's favorite flower—

The marquis was quite calm, quite silent. He accepted his fate.

Here, before his eyes, was the fact that his wife