“Why,” I cried, “I thought you said he had been murdered?”
“Wait!” she said impatiently--“Wait! Over in the wing-room there was a woman, not spying on the movements of her master or mistress--she afterwards swore--but being in love with the valet, she was watching for him, and so happened to be a witness to the hanging of the old Count. No sooner--swore this woman--had her master kicked away the chair on which he had been standing, than a door opened and Madame de Varney entered. For one instant she stood apparently stunned by the sight before her--and then she laughed! She made no movement to call for help--she offered no help herself, but came closer to the writhing, horribly-struggling, hanging figure! The woman swore that once her master threw out his hand imploringly--that she thought he touched her mistress, she was so close to him--but she, the witness, turned faint just then at the awful drawing up of the hanging man’s limbs and did not see quite clearly--but another servant joined just then, and both watched--and swore that only when the master was quite still did the mistress move, and then she went first to a desk and looked at some papers, and then rushed to the door, throwing it open and calling for help! She rang the bell violently, and the valet rushed in at her call, as if he had been standing at the very door--but before he made a movement to cut down the body, he spoke fiercely and rapidly to the Countess, and turned to the swaying figure of the Count de Varney, who had died horribly of slow strangulation!
“The trial was long, for that part of the world. The scandal was great, the mock-marriage being scoffed at and Madame Miriam de B---- treated simply as an adventuress. The will in her favor told against her greatly, but, to the stupefaction of every one, the valet defended her--swearing _he_ had seen his master before his mistress had--that he was _dead before she entered the room_--that he had gone for help, not wishing to touch the body without a witness being present, etc. She swore that her husband was dead when she found him--but without the valet she would certainly have been condemned to long, long imprisonment at the very least. She lives under an assumed name now, and just wanders over the world, as houseless as----”