"Let her suffer," I said to myself; "let her be punished for her unfaithfulness to the memory of the dead!" But I was ashamed a little later of having allowed such a thought to flit across my mind; I repelled it as a crime. To have lived with an assassin for fifteen years, and borne his name! Ah, she never could endure such a discovery, or I the remorse of having revealed so hideous a truth to her. No, no, let him escape! I looked at the clock, and with each swing of the pendulum the chances of the villain's escape were increased. What route had he taken? Had he set out for England? A few hours more and he would be in London, secure, hidden, and lost amid the swarming multitudes of the great city. "Oh, mother, mother," I cried as I flung myself upon the sofa and writhed in mental agony, "what have I not done for you!" After a while I arose and resolutely put away the image of Edmond Termonde, substituting that of his brother. He at least could not escape me. If "vengeance is a dish to be eaten cold," I had full leisure to prepare mine at my case. My stepfather could not fly as his accomplice had done; his marriage with my mother, the successful result of his crime, made him my prisoner. I knew where to find him always, and should always be free to approach him and bring about the scene between us which the execution of my design demanded. What design? What but that which had already haunted me, that which had appeared to offer sufficient compensation, if I did not allow one of my two enemies to escape; the design that had taken the form in my mind of a resolution? I uttered aloud the words, "I am going to kill him." Several times I repeated, "I am going to kill him, I am going to kill him," with a kind of frenzy, as though I were intoxicated. So I was, by a vision of my mothers infamous husband, stiff, stark, dead; those, eyes whose glance I had suffered from so long, sightless; that mouth which had proposed the blood bargain, mute. Never would that body, whose movements I had so detested, move again. A strange wild delight came over me, while the vision born of my hate was before my mind's eye. "At last, at last," I again said aloud, "I am going to kill him!" Immediately after came the inevitable question: how?