"What the devil have I to do with all this?" the Freiherr burst out, more and more disgusted with Sorr, who had hoped his theatrical pathos was producing a very different impression. "For Heaven's sake, come to the point!"
"I am about to do so. My treacherous friend, Count Repuin----"
"Stay! What name was that? Count Repuin, the Russian, Werner's friend and confidant,--was he the man?"
"The same, Herr Baron. I lost the greater part of my fortune to him; he systematically contrived my ruin, believing that when I found myself a beggar, my wife, with destitution staring her in the face, would lend an ear to his vile proposals. When I had lost all, so that I knew not where to turn for the barest necessaries of existence, he carried to my wife the false report that I was dishonoured, that I had been detected in cheating at cards, and that it was in his power to send me to a jail. It was a bold falsehood, but it found credence with my wife, whose esteem for me my passion for play had destroyed; and when he further informed her that, in consideration of a large sum of money, I had resigned to him all claim upon her duty, in short, that I had sold her to him, in her despair the wretched woman believed this lie also."
"Infamous! incredible!" the Freiherr indignantly exclaimed, involuntarily interested at last in Sorr's recital.
"But the scoundrel failed in his schemes, although he has plunged me into misery. Devilish though his cunning was, he failed to take into account one thing,--in which, indeed, he had no faith,--that a woman might be impregnably virtuous. He did not know my Lucie. What was his wealth to her in comparison with her honour? She spurned his offers with contempt, and yet she believed him, and driven by despair almost to madness, she secretly left my house. When on the morning after the fearful night in which I had sacrificed my last hope at the gaming-table I sought my wife's apartment to pray for her forgiveness and to make her the promise for which she had so often implored me, that never again would I touch a card, I found upon her table this terrible letter. Read it, Herr Baron; it will explain to you better than any words of mine the depth of my misery." And Sorr handed to the Freiherr the letter that Lucie had left behind her on the evening of her flight. The old Baron read: