Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/494

THE AMERICAN prepared for the return to Poitiers, and then he shut the door of the common salle and strode toward the solitary lamp on the chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper and quickly unfolded it. It was covered with pencil-marks, which at first, in the feeble light, seemed indistinct. But his fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the tremulous signs, the free English of which might have been, without the hopelessly obscure date:

"My wife has tried to kill me and has done it; I'm horribly, helplessly dying. It 's in order to marry my beloved daughter to M. de Cintré and then go on herself all the same. With all my soul I protest—I forbid it. I'm not insane—ask the doctors, ask Mrs. B. It was alone with me here to-night; she attacked me and put me to death. It's murder if murder ever was. Ask the doctors, tell every one, show every one this. "."