The late combatants threw dust in the eyes of the lady's husband cleverly enough by pretending that Sainte-Croix had rescued her from the unwelcome attentions of Theria, who had mistaken her in the uncertain light for a lady with whom he had an appointment. The cloak which the Marchioness wore, together with the darkness of the night, had prevented his discovering that she was not the person he expected until her cries had brought in Sainte-Croix, who was passing, as he said himself, "to his lodgings in the Rue des Bernardins."
The lady went home with her husband, and Sainte-Croix retired to his lodgings, there to meditate on the perfidy of his mistress. The Chevalier de Sainte-Croix was even more learned in poisons, and less scrupulous in the use of them, than his mistress; and in his first gusts of passion, on discovering her treachery, he was inclined--in the hate of her that took temporary possession of him--to subject her to their effect; but reflection produced demoniacal results. She should be spared to kill those who ought to be near and dear to her!
"'I will be her bane--her curse!' he exclaimed. 'I will be her bad angel!... And I will triumph over that besotted fool, her husband,' etc.
"He opened a small, iron-clamped box, and brought from it a small packet, carefully sealed, and a phial of clear, colourless fluid.
"'I have it! It is here--the source, not of life, but of death!'
"Almost as he speaks, he is summoned by the _femme de chambre_ of the Marchioness to an interview at her residence at her father's house, the Hôtel d'Aubray. The Chevalier found the enchantress in studied disarray. She might have been made up after one of Guido's Magdalens," says the author, "so beautiful were her rounded shoulders, so dishevelled her light hair," etc.
The lovers were speedily reconciled, but the lady had an important communication to make--no less than the discovery of their intimacy by her husband, whom she felt sure had revealed the fact to her father, M. d'Aubray. A long pause, broken by Sainte-Croix:
"'Marie,' he said, 'they must die, or our happiness is impossible.'"
The Marchioness was not yet hardened enough to receive this announcement with equanimity; and the lovers were still discussing the _pros_ and _cons_ of it, when they were surprised by Monsieur d'Aubray, who, entering by a secret door, "stood looking on the scene before him." Any doubts of guilty intimacy, if he had any, were dispelled; and, after ordering his daughter to her chamber, he turned to Sainte-Croix, and said: