"_Mem._--To write to Marson asking for an interview.
". . . I will take up Judas and Roger with me, so as to convict her of the crime . . . It will be a terrible ordeal for the poor boy, but anything is better than that he should marry a murderess . . . This was the reason she refused to let me see the letters . . . some of her own were there, betraying her guilty passion . . . She has been playing a double game all through, but now she is brought to book at last . . . She must be a woman of iron nerve . . . Her adopted sister is lying dangerously ill from the consequences of Judith's crime . . . from the sudden intelligence that the man she loved is dead, and yet Judith can still wear her mask and play the part of a sick-nurse . . . She must be a perfect fiend . . . Lucrezia Borgia _fin de siècle_ . . . I expect to have a terrible scene to-morrow night . . . Poor Roger! . . .
"Judas is an incarnate devil . . . I wish he was the guilty one instead of Judith Varlins . . . Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to put the irons on him."
Have you ever been in the tropics? If so, you must know how cruel the sun can be to the unhappy Europeans grilling under its ardent rays. It does not invigorate, nor tan the skin overmuch, nor make one think life is a good thing; but it enervates the system, it relaxes the muscles, it dulls the brain, until the body is nothing but a worn-out shell, that moves, and rests, and lies down, and stands up in a mechanical fashion, like an automaton. It was like this that Judith felt after the terrible interview with Guinaud, and she went the round of her daily duties in a dull, listless manner, that showed how greatly her vital force had been exhausted by the ordeal she had undergone. With constant attendance on the invalid, and anxious thoughts about the position of affairs with regard to the Frenchman, she was worn out mentally and physically.
At present it was difficult to come to any decision relative to Florry's illness as the crisis had not yet come, and youth, health, and love of life were all fighting desperately against the shadow of death. The shock sustained by Florry on hearing of the untimely end of her lover had quite unsettled her brain, and the balance was trembling between health and sickness, between sanity and insanity, between life and death. She needed constant watching, for at times, in the most unexpected manner, she would spring from her bed and try to leave the room, bound on some fantastic journey created by the excited state of her brain. At other times she lay languid and exhausted, with dim, unseeing eyes, raving madly about her lover and the unforeseen calamity of his death. Afraid to trust this fragile life to the care of a hired nurse, Judith herself sat by the bedside, and ministered to the wants of the sick girl, holding the cool drink to the fevered lips, bathing the feverish brow, and arranging with loving hand the disordered bed-clothes.