g out a word. The Countess, with feminine tact and obeying her
instincts of a woman of the world, tried to answer him two or three
times, but in vain. She could not find words, in the perplexity of her
mind, and her own voice almost frightened her in the silence of the
large room, where nothing else was heard except the slight sound of
plates and knives and forks.

Suddenly, her husband said to her, bending forward: "Here, amidst your
children, will you swear to me that what you told me just now, is true?"

The hatred which was fermenting in her veins, suddenly roused her, and
replying to that question with the same firmness with which she had
replied to his looks, she raised both her hands, the right pointing
towards the boys and the left towards the girls, and said in a firm,
resolute voice, and without any hesitation: "On the head of my children,
I swear that I have told you the truth."

He got up, and throwing his table napkin onto the table with an
exasperated movement, he turned round and flung his chair against the
wall, and then went out without another word, while she, uttering a deep
sigh, as if after a first victory, went on in a calm voice: "You must
not pay any attention to what your father has just said, my darlings; he
was very much upset a short time ago, but he will be all right again,
in a few days."

Then she talked with the Abbe and with Miss Smith, and had tender,
pretty words for all her children; those sweet spoiling mother's ways
which unfold little hearts.

When dinner was over, she went into the drawing-room with all her little
following. She made the elder ones chatter, and when their bedtime came
she kissed them for a long time, and then went alone into her room.

She waited, for she had no doubt that he would come, and she made up her
mind then, as her children were not with her, to defend her human skin,
as she defended her life as a woman of the world; and in the pocket of
her dress she put the little loaded revolver, which she had bought a few
days previously. The hours went by, the hours struck, and every sound
was hushed in the house. Only the cabs continued to rumble through the
streets, but their noise was only heard vaguely through the shuttered
and curtained windows.

She waited, energetic and nervous, without any fear of him now, ready
for anything, and almost triumphant, for she had found means of
torturing him continually, during every moment of his life.

But the first