Madame de Hansfeld looked at her husband with amazement. "Sir, take care, your brain wanders!" "I tell you that three times you have attempted to assassinate me, madame!" "I?" "You, madame! You remember the pavilion at Trieste; the lone _auberge_, on the road to Geneva; and then the last attempt that was made but two days ago against my life?" "I--I? Why, it is impossible that you can say this seriously, sir?" exclaimed Paula. "For what motive should I commit so black a crime? It is horrible! for surely nothing in my conduct could have authorised such terrible suspicions." "Suspicions, madame? say, rather certainties." "Certainties? and of what nature--on what proofs do you base them? But I am wrong to discuss with you thus,--it is really derangement." "Dare you to allude to my derangement! why it was my forbearance that was my sole derangement, madame; I could not isolate myself in distrust--surround myself with precautions without explaining the cause, and that explanation would have ruined you." Madame de Hansfeld looked at her husband with increasing surprise, she could not credit, she could not believe what she had heard. "Now, sir," she said, recalling her recollection, "all your strange caprices, your singular bursts are explained. This odious accusation has, at least, the merit of being precise, and my justification will be as easy." "You pretend then----" "To justify myself? Yes, most assuredly, and I request that you will listen to me." "Your audacity confounds me. There was a time when I might have been your dupe--but now----" "Now, sir, you will be pleased to tell me the grounds on which your accusation rests; what are your proofs? I will refute them one by one. There is no logic so potent as truth." M. de Hansfeld, confounded at this assurance, looked in his turn at his wife with unfeigned and vast astonishment. She was so calm, she seemed to anticipate with so much innocence those explanations, which a guilty conscience would have dreaded, that his doubts all returned more strongly than ever. "What, madame!" exclaimed he, "do you deny that one evening at Trieste, after a painful dispute, you endeavoured to get rid of me by throwing into a cup of milk, which had been brought for me, a poison so violent, that a spaniel, to which I was greatly attached, died the moment after he had drunk it?" "I--I poison?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, with horror, "why, who could--great God!--have inspired you with such suspicions? How have I deserved them? How, since then do you suppose me capable of such a crime?" "That crime was not the only one, madame!" "If the others have no better proofs than that, sir, God will demand at your hands an account of these terrible accusations." After a silent reflection for some moments, Paula resumed,--