“I,” answered the countess,—“I say that Anna Stjärnhök is a clever girl, and she knew what she was doing when she told Elizabeth that story.”
“You are pleased to misunderstand me,” said the count. “I ask what you think of this story. Has Countess Märta Dohna tried to persuade her daughter, my sister, to marry a dismissed priest?”
Countess Märta was silent an instant. Alas, that Henrik, so stupid, so stupid! Now he was quite on the wrong track. Her hound was pursuing the hunter himself and letting the hare get away. But if Märta Dohna was without an answer for an instant, it was not longer.
“Dear friend,” she said with a shrug, “there is a reason for letting all those old stories about that unhappy man rest,—the same reason which makes me beg you to suppress all public scandal. It is most probable that he has perished in the night.”
She spoke in a gentle, commiserating tone, but there was not a word of truth in what she said.
“Elizabeth has slept late to-day and therefore has not heard that people have already been sent out on to the lake to look for Herr Berling. He has not returned to Ekeby, and they fear that he has drowned. The ice broke up this morning. See, the storm has split it into a thousand pieces.”
Countess Elizabeth looked out. The lake was almost open.
Then in despair she threw herself on her knees before her husband and confession rushed from her lips. She had wished to escape God’s justice. She had lied and dissembled. She had thrown the white mantle of innocence over her.
“Condemn me, turn me out! I have loved him. Be in no doubt but that I have loved him! I tear my hair, I rend my clothes with grief. I do not care for anything when he is dead. I do not care to shield myself. You shall know the whole truth. My heart’s love I have taken from my husband and given to a stranger. Oh, I am one of them whom a forbidden love has tempted.”
You desperate young thing, lie there at your judges’ feet and tell them all! Welcome, martyrdom! Welcome, disgrace! Welcome! Oh, how shall you bring the bolt of heaven down on your young head!
Tell your husband how frightened you were when the pain came over you, mighty and irresistible, how you shuddered for your heart’s wretchedness. You would rather have met the ghosts of the graveyard than the demons in your own soul.