Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part IV - VI
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“And this mysterious illness, these headaches from
which I suffer....”
“What! You blame me for that too!”
I had not meant what she insinuated; I had merely
referred to the symptoms of cyanide poisoning which I
had observed in myself.
All of a sudden a reminiscence flashed into my mind;
the thought of something which at the time had seemed
too improbable that it had left no permanent trace in
my memory....
My suspicion was strengthened when I remembered a
certain epithet used in an anonymous letter which I had
received a short time after Marie’s divorce. The letter
referred to her as “the prostitute of Soedertelje.”
What did it mean? I had made inquiries which had
come to nothing. Was I on the point of making a fresh
discovery?
When the Baron, Marie’s first husband, made her
acquaintance at Soedertelje, she was half and half engaged
to a young officer, a man with admittedly bad health.
Poor Gustav had played the part of a greenhorn. That
accounted for the warm gratitude which she felt for him
even after the divorce; she had confessed at the time that
he had delivered her from dangers... what dangers she
had not mentioned.
But “the prostitute of Soedertelje”? I reflected...
the retired life which the young couple led, without
friends, without society; they had been ostracised by the
class to which they belonged.
Had Marie’s mother, formerly a governess of
middleclass origin, who had wheedled Marie’s father into a
marriage with her; who had fled to Sweden to escape
from pressing debts; had she, the widow who so cleverly
contrived to conceal her poverty, stooped to sell her
daughter when they were living at Soedertelje?
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