Ha! at last! But they were carrying him! Madame shivered slightly as she watched the four men come slowly along the passage, bearing a chair between them. At the door they stumbled and paused, giving her time to think. They had been racking him, then, and he could not walk; she might have guessed it. Her cheek, white before, became a shade ghastlier, and she clutched the bar with a firmer grip. They brought him slowly down the three steps and through the narrow passage towards her. The men who carried him blocked her view, but she saw presently that there was something odd about his head. When they set him down, three paces from her, she saw what it was. His face was covered. There was a loose cloth over his head, and he leaned forward in a strange way. What did it mean? She began to tremble, gazing at him wildly, expecting she knew not what. And he did not move. [Illustration: "THEY WERE CARRYING HIM" (_p_. 192).] Suddenly the President's solemn voice broke the silence. "Madame," he said--but it seemed to her that he was speaking a long way off--"here is your witness. You asked to be confronted with him, and the court, hoping that this may be the more merciful way of inducing you to confess your crime, assent to the request. But I warn you that he is a witness not for you, but against you. He has confessed." For a moment she looked dumbly at the speaker; then her eyes went back to the veiled figure in the chair--it had a horrible attraction for her. "Unhappy woman," the President continued, in solemn accents, "he has confessed. Will you now, before you look upon him, do likewise?" She shook her head. She would have denied, protested, cried that she was not guilty; but her throat was parched--she had lost her voice, hope, all. There was a drumming noise in the court; or perhaps it was in her head. It was growing dark, too. "He has confessed," she heard the President go on--but he was speaking a long, long way off now, and his voice came to her ears dully--"by executing on himself that punishment which otherwise the law would have imposed. Are you still obstinate? Let the face be uncovered then. Now, wretched woman, look on your accomplice." Perhaps he spoke in mercy, and to prepare her; for she looked, and did not at once swoon, though the sight of that dead yellow face, with its stony eyes and open mouth, drew shrieks from more than one. The self-poisoner had done his work well. The sombre features wore even in death a cynical grin, the lips a smile of triumph. But this was on the surface. In the glassy eyes, dull and lustreless, lurked--as all saw who gazed closely--a horror; a look of sudden awakening, as if in the moment of dissolution the wicked man had come face to face with judgment; and, triumphant over his earthly foes, had met on the threshold of the dark world a shape that froze the very marrow in his bones.