A Transaction in Hearts by Edgar Saltus — Read

At the breakfast-table on the morrow Jones was taciturn and Gonfallon white. When a little before in the dim baronial hall the flames had lapped at the climax of three lives, there had come to them unawares one of those emotions that are as potent for good as the conglomerate precepts of sayers of sooth. It was not that sin had appalled, for that it always does: it was that forgiveness had been impossible to one they deemed a saint. And before their vision, as the drama unrolled, each had pictured it according to his nature, but both had dreamed.

To Gonfallon it had displayed another of the uncircuitable labyrinths of the human heart. To Jones it had been a document. Gonfallon had imagined the countess pleading with her husband, pleading with her friend, until forbearance had been warped and the deed was done. Jones had evoked the jealousy of a woman accustomed to reign; he had seen, as in a glass, the first suspicion, the affected cecity, the studied calm, the uncertainty, the vigilance, yet still the smile, the laughing yet observant eyes, then the accumulating trifles, some partial evidence, the lure, the surprise, the axe, and death.