And that last miserable scene,
on the eve of their projected voyage to India, when the maddened
tyrant discovered Pierre Troubetskoi's long-belated letter, returned
once more to madden her. Fraser had simply raged in a demoniac
passion.
For the mistake of a life was at last revealed when that one letter
came! The letter addressed to the wife as Valerie Delavigne, which
had followed them slowly upon their travels, and, by a devil's
decree, had fallen, by a spy-servant's trick, into Hugh Fraser's
hands. It mattered not that the coming lover was even yet ignorant
of the miserable marriage. The envelope, with its address, was
missing, when the long pages of burning tenderness were read by
the infuriated husband. "I have been buried a year in the snows
of Siberia," wrote Pierre, "upon the secret service of the Czar.
I was ill of a fever for long months upon my return, and now I am
coming to take you to my heart, never to be parted any more." The
address of his banker in Paris, all the plans for their voyage to
Russia, even the tender messages to the sister of his love--all
these were the last goad to a maddened man, whose raging invective
and brutal violence drove a weeping woman out into the cheerless
night. He deemed her the Russian's cherished mistress. With a
shudder Alixe Delavigne recalled the white face of the discarded
mother, whose babe slumbered in peace, while the half-demented
woman fled away to the shelter of the house of an old French nurse.
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