"Who knows? Read it, and let me know your opinion afterwards." Puymirol complied, though somewhat reluctantly, for he was afraid he would be obliged to change his first opinion. He read as follows: "'My king, my love, my life, I am intoxicated with happiness. What blissful hours I have spent with you! When will they return? Why did I allow you to depart? I feel a mad desire to hasten after you, and throw myself in the arms that clasped me so fondly. Before I met you I never knew what it was to love. Now, however, my happiness is perfect, and I have proved to you how ardent is my affection. I have placed myself in your power by confiding my great secret to you. In a word, you might ruin me. And if I write this, it is in order that you may have in your possession a proof, a confession. If I deceived you, if I ceased to love you--But I am blaspheming! I shall love you until my latest breath. But if I ever give you any cause of complaint, show me no mercy, crush me, deliver me up; I shall have deserved my fate. Oh, when will the day come when I shall be able to acknowledge you as my lord and master before all the world? When shall I bear your name? It seems to me that day will never come. Eight months longer to wait! Eight months during which we must conceal our love, and pretend to mourn a being I loathed. And what if you learned to love another in the meantime? What if your infatuation should return for the woman I hate the most because it was she whom you most loved. Ah! I should die. It would kill me; but I should not die without being avenged upon that creature.'" "Well, what do you think of that?" asked George. "I think that the lady was desperately in love with Dargental, and that she was out of her mind when she wrote that letter." "It was evidently written just two months after her husband's death, for she deplores the fact that her happiness must be deferred eight months longer, and the law does not allow a woman to marry again until ten months of widowhood have expired." "But it is at the least two years since Lescombat died of apoplexy." "Or of something else. Well, the marriage was deferred for some reason or other, which is conclusive proof that the courtship was stormy. The countess has had plenty of time to change her mind." "She did not change it, as she meant to marry Dargental next week." "I admit that; but perhaps she was not so much in earnest as formerly. Dargental, in spite of his promises, had not severed his connection with Blanche Pornic, and Madame de Lescombat may have regretted saying, and above all, writing, so much; she herself could not break the engagement, as he had her completely in his power." "And you fancy that she could devise no other means but murder to escape him. That is absurd, my dear fellow."