be a little reasonable. Go sensibly home,
and I promise you that Wenceslas shall never set foot in that woman's
house. I ask you to make the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice to forgive
the husband you love so small a fault. I ask you--for the sake of my
gray hairs, and of the love you owe 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