"
Mrs. Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging
branch of a lime tree.
"I suppose so," she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; "but that
depends upon you. I'll be as honest as you were. I poisoned my
husband. I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So
I suppose that ends our acquaintance."
She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he
stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what
it was all about.
She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes
blazing.
"Don't look at me like that!" she cried, as though she were in acute
pain. "Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don't look that way.
Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you--here on my arms,
and on my back are scars--and it has been more than a year--scars
that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and
struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible
words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every
night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my
endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to
drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made
of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it--
because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me.
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