A direful vision of horrible struggles yet
to come--of want, despair, disgrace in reservation--sickened my soul.
"I will call--I will call," said I, gasping,--"I will call Monsieur
C----; he"----
"Don't, don't, I beg of you!" she cried, catching me by the sleeve,
with a sardonic laugh; low, whispering, full of direful meaning, it
stealthily echoed through the saloon. "Don't disturb the good man. He
sleeps so soundly after his well-spent days! _He_ doesn't have any bad
dreams, I fancy,--rid of such a troublesome, vicious wife,--a wife who
harassed her husband to death, and murdered her little boy,--he sleeps
sound, doesn't he? And yet--I declare, in the name of God, Christine
C----,"--and she lifted up her bony finger like an avenging
fate,--"_he did it_!"
I had been endeavoring to calm myself while this woman of spectral
face and form stared at me with her maniac eye across the counter. I
had succeeded. At any rate, this was a tangible horror, and could be
grappled with; it was not beyond human reach, a shadowy retribution
from the invisible world. To face the circumstances, however
repulsive, is less depressing than to await in suspense the coming
of their footsteps, and the descent of that blow we know they will
inflict.
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