ou would not recognize me; you closed the doors of every house against
me; you have never let an opportunity of mortifying me slip by. And
when did I come, as you were always doing, to drain our poor father, a
thousand francs at a time, till he is left as you see him now? That
is all your doing, sister! I myself have seen my father as often as I
could. I have not turned him out of the house, and then come and fawned
upon him when I wanted money. I did not so much as know that he had
spent those twelve thousand francs on me. I am economical, as you know;
and when papa has made me presents, it has never been because I came and
begged for them."

"You were better off than I. M. de Marsay was rich, as you have reason
to know. You always were as slippery as gold. Good-bye; I have neither
sister nor----"

"Oh! hush, hush, Nasie!" cried her father.

"Nobody else would repeat what everybody has ceased to believe. You are
an unnatural sister!" cried Delphine.

"Oh, children, children! hush! hush! or I will kill myself before your
eyes."

"There, Nasie, I forgive you," said Mme. de Nucingen; "you are very
unhappy. But I am kinder than you are. How could you say _that_ just
when I was ready to do anything in the world to help you, even to be
reconciled with my husband, which for my own sake I----Oh! it is just
like you; you have behaved cruelly to me all through these nine years."

"Children, children, kiss each other!" cried the father. "You are
angels, both of you."

"No. Let me alone," cried the Countess shaking off the hand that her
father had laid on her arm. "She is more merciless than my husband. Any
one might think she was a model of all the virtues herself!"

"I would rather have people think that I owed money to M. de Marsay
than own that M. de Trailles had cost me more than two hundred thousand
francs," retorted Mme. de Nucingen.

"_Delphine!_" cried the Countess, stepping towards her sister.

"I shall tell you the truth about yourself if you begin to slander me,"
said the Baroness coldly.

"Delphine! you are a ----"

Father Goriot sprang between them, grasped the Countess' hand, and laid
his own over her mouth.

"Good heavens, father! What have you been handling this morning?" said
Anastasie.

"Ah! well, yes, I ought not to have touched you," said the poor father,
wiping his hands on his trousers, "but I have been packing up my things;
I did not know that you were coming to see me."

He was glad tha