Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/102

 "Fool!"—the duchess as she spoke unlocked a secretaire, and drew out a small packet of letters—"there are both hers and yours; they were intercepted by my orders. All I want you to do is to take her last and produce it yourself to the duke, altering the date of it to yesterday as a proof of her contempt and hatred of him. Fool! do you not see she has taken his hand only in despair of gaining back yours? Punish her for so easily relinquishing you."

Mohrart stood there like a man mortally wounded: his heart ceased almost to beat. Then a fire came into his eyes. "Tempter, sent from below," he said, "you have wrecked the happiness of two hearts, merely to help forward some evil scheme, to advance some evil purpose, whither tending you yourself best know; but I will not interrupt the progress of Beatrice to the rank and power she will ennoble. I have prayed to Heaven to give me the strength to surrender her for the happiness of this people. The strength was given me. I will not turn back. I will not be faithless to Heaven now to advance the wicked intrigues of a corrupt woman."

The duchess was at a white heat. She burned, but there were no sparkles and there was no blaze.

"'Tis well," she said. "Wise only in books, you push from you honours I offered you. Fools! you shall both perish; you shall learn what it is to brave my anger. Had I found you obedient I might have seated you on the throne by my side, now only misery and desolation await you. You do not comprehend the grandeur of my views, and you place yourself beneath the foot of a mindless girl. Be it so. You shall soon learn how devastating is the anger of a slighted woman."

Here the duchess unlocked the door and angrily rang a silver bell that stood on the table. A hard-featured female attendant instantly appeared with a tray of chocolate and a little crystal bottle of ratafia.

"Professor," she said, "will you please add two drops of that ratafia to the duke's chocolate; my hand shakes; he prefers it to vanille. Louise, tell the duke his chocolate awaits him here."

"I did not wish Louise to see that we had quarrelled," said the duchess. "Adieu, Professor Mohrart. Adieu, long-suffering lover. You have not gall enough to hate even the man who will marry the woman who still loves you. Excellent Christian, adieu; some day, perhaps, you will think of revenge, but beware of mine first."

The duke's voice was heard at the very moment the last glimpse of the crimson silk train of the duchess swept from the room. He came in patting a huge tawny stag hound with which a long-eared spaniel of the finest dimensions was playing with dignified condescension.

"Well, professor," he said, as he threw himself languidly in a gilt chair, "to tell you the truth, I am infernally wearied with that absurd pastime that men have christened hunting, and which seems to me a mere ingenious way of encouraging men of fashion to break their valuable necks. My amiable stepmother sent me word that Desanges had brought my chocolate here. Aye, there I see it is. Would you oblige me by handing it—a thousand thanks. Do you care for Sèvres, M. le Professor?"

The professor replied in the affirmative.

"This cup of mine is mere peasant crockery to the jewelled set I have ordered for our wedding breakfast—by the by, my dear professor, why did you never marry? There's that handsome blonde daughter of the lord chamberlain—with thirty thousand"

Here the duke raised the cup to his lips and began languidly to sip. He put it down.

"This chocolate is far too strong of the ratafia." As he said this the duke suddenly rose with a peculiar wild stare in his eyes, staggered, caught at the tablecloth for support, and dragged it towards him till it fell on the floor, throwing the candelabra down with a crash. Then he fell heavily forward upon his face before the astonished professor could run to his assistance.

The professor knelt over the fallen man, and was in the act of loosening his neckcloth as the duchess and her servant entered. They uttered piercing cries of horror, and ran to raise the duke in their arms; but already the duke was in the agonies of death. The only words he faintly articulated were:

"It was Mohrart who put poison into my chocolate. I always thought he hated me. Mind you, people, that he is broken—on—the—wheel" Then he moaned again, made a faint effort to rise, groaned twice, and fell back dead in the arms of a servant.

" is no hope for him," said a barber in a crowd outside the town hall of Eisenherz, the day of Mohrart's trial, to his friend the saddler, "no hope at all, I tell you. The Lord Chamberlain's own man, who has been all day at the trial, tells me that the dowager duchess's maid can swear she saw Mohrart pour laurel water into the duke's chocolate, a bottle of ratafia mixed with laurel water was actually found on the floor of Mohrart's bedroom, and there was laurel water afterwards discovered in the chocolate left in the cup. Oh, he was a double-dyed villain! Yet he looked so plausible. Well, I shall go and see him on the wheel, neighbour."

"And the duchess's gentleman, I hear," said a third gossip, who just then came up "has produced intercepted letters, showing love still existed between Mohrart and Lady Beatrice; but Mohrart's defence is that the dates have been forged, or that they were letters of a year ago, before the duke admired Beatrice, and when he and Beatrice were engaged to be married. There is a report that the Sealed Knots intend to rescue him from prison, believing him a victim of some state intrigue, so the guards