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 trees in a pink dress. She must have seen the grief and pity in my face, for she took me by the hand and we walked up and down together, saying not a word. She was in despair. I knew it. It was soon after that, perhaps a few mornings after, that she came to see my father. She did not ask for my mother. She asked only to see my father. I was in the room opposite and saw Joseph let her into my father's bureau. I knew that she should not have come. I knew that there was danger. Joseph knew it, too. He stood and looked at me as if he would have asked me to do something; and then he went away, leaving me there. I was standing looking at the closed door when my mother came down the passage, very quickly as though she had been called. She did not ask me a question. She stopped short and fixed her eyes on my face, and then without one word she went into the bureau and shut the door. She found them in each other's arms. My father kept his pistols in a case on the bookshelves, next the door. She took the weapon and fired at my father and turned the second bullet against herself. All over the house the shots were heard. Then I went in and saw them.'

'Oh, no;—oh, no—' Jill muttered. She, too, hid her face.

'My father lay there, dead,' said Marthe Ludérac. 'His mistress knelt beside him. She wore the pink dress and when she staggered up all the front was covered with his blood. My mother was lying on a chair near the door. She was moaning, and half her face seemed shot away. That was how I found them.'