rains, which she dissolved in the potions prescribed by the doctor.

It might be supposed that Tremorel, enslaved by his horrid position,
and harassed by increasing terror, would renounce forever his
proposed marriage with Laurence. Not so. He clung to that project
more desperately than ever. Bertha's threats, the great obstacles
now intervening, his anguish, crime, only augmented the violence of
his love for her, and fed the flame of his ambition to secure her
as his wife. A small and flickering ray of hope which lighted the
darkness of his despair, consoled and revived him, and made the
present more easy to bear. He said to himself that Bertha could not
be thinking of marrying him the day after her husband's death.
Months, a whole year must pass, and thus he would gain time; then
some day he would declare his will. What would she have to say?
Would she divulge the crime, and try to hold him as her accomplice?
Who would believe her? How could she prove that he, who loved and
had married another woman, had any interest in Sauvresy's death?
People don't kill their friends for the mere pleasure of it. Would
she provoke the law to exhume her husband? She was now in a
position, thought he, wherein she could, or would not exercise her
reason. Later on, she would reflect, and then she would be arrested
by the probability of those dangers, the certainty of which did not
now terrify her.

He did not wish that she should ever be his wife at any price. He
would have detested her had she possessed millions; he hated her
now that she was poor, ruined, reduced to her own narrow means.
And that she was so, there was no doubt, Sauvresy indeed knew all.
He was content to wait; he knew that Laurence loved him enough to
wait for him one, or three years, if necessary. He already had
such absolute power over her, that she did not try to combat the
thoughts of him, which gently forced themselves on her, penetrated
to her soul, and filled her mind and heart. Hector said to himself
that in the interest of his designs, perhaps it was well that
Bertha was acting as she did. He forced himself to stifle his
conscience in trying to prove that he was not guilty. Who thought
of this crime? Bertha. Who was executing it? She alone. He
could only be reproached with moral complicity in it, a complicity
involuntary, forced upon him, imposed somehow by the care for his
own life. Sometimes, however, a bitter remorse seized him. He
could have understood