If you don't like it, say so."

Fanny, involuntarily trembling, uttered, with an effort, a scarcely
audible "Go on!"

"I should scarcely have recognized you if I had seen you. If I had met
you in the street, I should certainly have passed you by without
speaking. Yes, it is quite true. What a tiny little girl you were when
they took you away from me! Ah! why did not all my girls remain little!
Ay, ay! how poor people's daughters do grow up to be sure! Every time a
poor man's daughters grow up he has more cause for sorrow than for joy.
What will become of them? who will bring them up? Nowadays nobody cares
about marrying. Trade brings in less and less, the expenses of
housekeeping increase every day, and if a girl here and there does marry
after all, what does she gain by it? Why, a worthless sot of a husband,
and a life of misery, care, and anxiety. She'll go from bad to worse,
have to slave like a maid-of-all-work, be saddled with a lot of wicked
children, and when she gets old they'll pitch her into the street. Ay,
ay! the best thing a mother could do for her daughter when it is born
would be to bury it!"

Thus she emphasized, for the girl's benefit, all the difficulties of
marriage, and laid stress upon the more disagreeable features of
domestic life. And the girl knew quite well why she spoke to her in this
way, for that one word, "How beautiful you are!" had suddenly
enlightened her mind, and she also began to entertain the suspicion
which, by the way, Teresa had never dared to communicate, that her
mother had come to her as a tempter.

"Are you cold, Fanny?"

"No," stammered the girl, huddling up beneath the bed-clothes.

"I thought I heard you shiver."

"No, I didn't."

"You used to know Rezi Halm, didn't you?"

"Yes," faltered Fanny, in a low voice, wondering what was coming next,
and what fresh attack was going to be made upon her.

"What a proud girl she was, eh? The whole lot of them were so proud--you
remember, surely?--they were neighbours, you know. There was no speaking
to them at all. When that misfortune happened to your eldest sister,
they would not even look at us. And now do you know what has happened to
those girls? A rich country gentleman fell in love with Rezi and carried
her off. At first they cursed her, they rejected her. Later on the
gentleman gave the girl a nice little property, and then they were
reconciled to her, and went to live with her--yes, the whole lot of
them, those