we your mother. You do not
want to blight my later years with bitterness and regret?"

Hortense fell at her father's feet like a crazed thing, with the
vehemence of despair; her hair, loosely pinned up, fell about her, and
she held out her hands with an expression that painted her misery.

"Father," she said, "ask my life! Take it if you will, but at least
take it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask
me to die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I
cannot swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband's roof, I
should be capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy--or of doing
worse! Do no exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not
have to mourn for me still living, for the least that can befall me is
to go mad. I feel madness close upon me!

"Yesterday, yesterday, he could dine with that woman, after having
read my letter?--Are other men made so? My life I give you, but do not
let my death be ignominious!--His fault?--A small one! When he has a
child by that woman!"

"A child!" cried Hulot, starting back a step or two. "Come. This is
really some fooling."

At this juncture Victorin and Lisbeth arrived, and stood dumfounded at
the scene. The daughter was prostrate at her father's feet. The
Baroness, speechless between her maternal feelings and her conjugal
duty, showed a harassed face bathed in tears.

"Lisbeth," said the Baron, seizing his cousin by the hand and pointing
to Hortense, "you can help me here. My poor child's brain is turned;
she believes that her Wenceslas is Madame Marneffe's lover, while all
that Valerie wanted was to have a group by him."

"_Delilah_!" cried the young wife. "The only thing he has done since
our marriage. The man would not work for me or for his son, and he has
worked with frenzy for that good-for-nothing creature.--Oh, father,
kill me outright, for every word stabs like a knife!"

Lisbeth turned to the Baroness and Victorin, pointing with a pitying
shrug to the Baron, who could not see her.

"Listen to me," said she to him. "I had no idea--when you asked me to
go to lodge over Madame Marneffe and keep house for her--I had no idea
of what she was; but many things may be learned in three years. That
creature is a prostitute, and one whose depravity can only be compared
with that of her infamous and horrible husband. You are the dupe, my
lord pot-boiler, of those people; you will be led further by them than
you drea