That, then, shall be the test! So I determined. Edgerton must be
punished. There is no escape. But for her--if she does not seek
the earliest occasion to reveal the truth, she is guilty beyond
doubt--doomed beyond redemption.
I entered the house with difficulty. I was as feeble as if I had been
under the hands of the physician for weeks. A light was burning on
the staircase. I took it and went into the parlor, which I narrowly
examined. There were no remaining proofs of the late disorder. The
table was set against the wall. The chess-men were all gathered
up, and neatly put away in the box, which stood upon the mantel.
"There is proof of coolness and deliberation here!" I muttered
to myself, as I took my way up-stairs. When I entered my chamber,
I felt a pang, the fore-runner of a spasm. I had been for several
years afflicted with these spasms, in great or small degree. They
marked every singular mental excitement under which I labored. It
was no doubt one of these spasms which had seized and overpowered
me while I sat within the tree. Never before had I suffered from
one so severe; but the violence of this was naturally due to the
extreme of agony--as sudden as it was terrible--which seized upon
my soul. My physician had provided me with a remedy against these
attacks to which I was accustomed to resort. This, though a potent
remedy, was also a potent poison. It was a medicine called the
hydrocyanic or prussic acid. Five minims was a dose, but two drops
were death. I went to the medicine-case which stood beneath the
head of the bed, with the view to getting out the vial; but my wife
started up eagerly as I approached, and with trembling accents,
demanded what was the matter. She saw me covered with mud and
soaking with water. I told her that I had got wet coming homeward
and had slipped down the hill.
"Why did you stay so late--why not come home sooner, dear husband?"
"Hypocrite!" I muttered while stooping down for the chest.
"You are sick--you have your spasms!" she now said, rising from the
bed and offering to measure the medicine. This she had repeatedly
done before; but I was not now willing to trust her. Doubts of her
fidelity led to other doubts.
"If she is prepared to dishonor, she is prepared to destroy you!"
said my familiar.
This suggestion seized upon my brain, and while I measured out the
minims, the busy fiend reminded me that I grasped the bane as well
as the antidote in my hand. A stern, a terrible image of retributive
justice presented itself before my thoughts. The feeling of
an awful necessity grew strong within me. "Shall the adulterer
alone perish? Shall the adultress escape?" The fiend answered with
tremulous but stern passion--"She shall surely die!"