ible. Where are the letters?

Pauline
They are in my possession.

Gertrude
In your room?

Pauline
They are where you can never reach them.

Gertrude (aside)
Madness with its wildest dreams spins through my brain! My fingers
itch for murder. It is in such moments as this that men kill each
other! How gladly would I kill her! My God! Do not forsake me! Leave
me my reason! (Aloud) Wait a moment.

Pauline (aside)
My thanks to you, Ferdinand! I see how much you love me; I have been
able to pay back to her all the wrongs she did us a short time
ago--and--she shall save us from all we feared!

Gertrude (aside)
She must have them about her,--but how can I be sure of that? Ah!
(Aloud) Pauline! If you have had those letters for long, you must have
known that I was in love with Ferdinand. You can only lately have
received them.

Pauline
They came into my hands this morning.

Gertrude
You have not read them all?

Pauline
Enough to find out that they would ruin you.

Gertrude
Pauline, life is just beginning for you. (A knock is heard.) Ferdinand
is the first man, young, well educated and distinguished, for he is
distinguished, by whom you have been attracted; but there are many
others in the world such as he is. Ferdinand has been in a certain
sense under the same roof with you, and you have seen him every day;
the first impulses of your heart have therefore directed you to him. I
understand this, and it is quite natural. Had I been in your place I
should doubtless have experienced the same feelings. But, my dear, you
know not the ways either of the world or of society. And if, like so
many other women, you have been deceiving yourself--for we women, ah,
how often are we thus deceived!--you still can make another choice.
But for me the deed has been done, I have no other choice to make.
Ferdinand is all I have, for I have passed my thirtieth year, and I
have sacrificed to him what I should have kept unsullied--the honor of
an aged man. The field is clear for you, you may yet love some other
man more ardently than you can love to-day--this is my experience.
Pauline, child, give him up, and you will learn what a devoted slave
you will have in me! You will have more than a mother, more than a
friend, you will have the unstinted help of a soul that is lost! Oh!
listen to me! (She kneels, and raises her hands to Pauline's corsage.)
Behold me at your feet, acknowledging you my rival! Is this sufficient
humiliation fo