"Then why did you obey me?" exclaimed Madame de Hansfeld, mechanically. "Why did you tell me all these horrors?" This was an odious remark, and betrayed the secret and homicidal thought of Paula. "I obeyed you," replied Iris, bitterly, "because I expected with impatience your order to do so, and if you had not given me that order I should have told you all without your commands." "What says she?" "I do not abuse myself; whilst I am working your happiness, I am hastening my own misery. When you marry M. de Morville, I should become to you merely an object of contempt and horror. It is true I might have acted in silence without informing you, and leaving you innocently to reap the fruit of this deadly plot. But I will confess--I had not the courage. I am willing to die for you, but it must be on condition that you say at least, 'Die for me!'" "Strange and abominable creature!" "Your happiness will be my misery, I know; but at least, in the bosom of your happy love you may perchance have a recollection for me." "If you sacrifice yourself thus for my interest, you should have waited until what you call my happiness was assured, in order to have made this disclosure to me. "No, godmother: it is possible that you have more virtue than love, and thus your happiness would have been for ever poisoned. Now, on the contrary, when you know the price of your union with M. de Morville, you can choose, you have in your hands the future of your love for M. de Morville, the fate of Bertha de Brévannes, and of your husband. One word from you to M. de Brévannes as to the _Black Book_, and he will know that you do not love him, that he is the dupe of a trick of which I am the contriver, and which, instead of bringing his wife to the Hôtel Lambert, in order to make her the more safely fall into the snare that is spreading for her, as well as M. de Hansfeld, he ought to snatch Bertha away from a love as yet innocent; as, in that case, the death of his wife and the prince would be useless to him. This is your duty, godmother. Do it! Unquestionably M. de Brévannes, enraged, will circulate the most atrocious calumnies respecting you. What then? They are but calumnies--it is true M. de Morville may be afflicted at them, believe in them, and smile scornfully when he reflects on the ideal and romantic love he had for you; what then? During the long life in store for you with the prince whom you do not love, and who loves not you, you may repeat boastingly every day,--I have done my duty." "Accursed be thou--demon sent from hell!" exclaimed Madame de Hansfeld, wildly, "leave me, leave me! Why do you come to enclose me in a frightful circle whence I cannot escape without causing the death of two unfortunates or by casting myself into an abyss of endless despair?"