a
Josepha, a Madame Marneffe!--Did you know that?"

"You, mamma, you! You have endured this for twenty----"

She broke off, staggered by her own thoughts.

"Do as I have done, my child," said her mother. "Be gentle and kind, and
your conscience will be at peace. On his death-bed a man may say, 'My
wife has never cost me a pang!' And God, who hears that dying breath,
credits it to us. If I had abandoned myself to fury like you, what would
have happened? Your father would have been embittered, perhaps he would
have left me altogether, and he would not have been withheld by any fear
of paining me. Our ruin, utter as it now is, would have been complete
ten years sooner, and we should have shown the world the spectacle of
a husband and wife living quite apart--a scandal of the most horrible,
heart-breaking kind, for it is the destruction of the family. Neither
your brother nor you could have married.

"I sacrificed myself, and that so bravely, that, till this last
connection of your father's, the world has believed me happy. My
serviceable and indeed courageous falsehood has, till now, screened
Hector; he is still respected; but this old man's passion is taking him
too far, that I see. His own folly, I fear, will break through the veil
I have kept between the world and our home. However, I have held
that curtain steady for twenty-three years, and have wept behind
it--motherless, I, without a friend to trust, with no help but in
religion--I have for twenty-three years secured the family honor----"

Hortense listened with a fixed gaze. The calm tone of resignation and
of such crowning sorrow soothed the smart of her first wound; the tears
rose again and flowed in torrents. In a frenzy of filial affection,
overcome by her mother's noble heroism, she fell on her knees before
Adeline, took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, as pious Catholics
kiss the holy relics of a martyr.

"Nay, get up, Hortense," said the Baroness. "Such homage from my
daughter wipes out many sad memories. Come to my heart, and weep for no
sorrows but your own. It is the despair of my dear little girl, whose
joy was my only joy, that broke the solemn seal which nothing ought to
have removed from my lips. Indeed, I meant to have taken my woes to
the tomb, as a shroud the more. It was to soothe your anguish that I
spoke.--God will forgive me!

"Oh! if my life were to be your life, what would I not do? Men, the
world, Fate, Nature, God Himself, I b