e me thus.
Since it is the only point on which I can strike you, I will strike
you there. I hold you by that means, do you hear, and I will keep you.
Either you dismiss that man, or I will no longer respect anything. My
wife shall know all! Her! So much the better! For some time I have been
stifled by my lies.... Your daughter, too, shall know all. She shall
judge you now as she would judge you one day."

As he spoke he advanced to her with a manner so cruel that she recoiled.
A few more moments and the man would have carried out his threat. He
was about to strike her, to break objects around him, to call forth
a terrible scandal. She had the presence of mind of an audacity more
courageous still. An electric bell was near at hand. She pressed it,
while Gorka said to her, with a scornful laugh, "That was the only
affront left you to offer me--to summon your servants to defend you."

"You are mistaken," she replied. "I am not afraid. I repeat you are mad,
and I simply wish to prove it to you by recalling you to the reality
of your situation.... Bid Mademoiselle Alba come down," said she to the
footman whom her ring had summoned. That phrase was the drop of cold
water which suddenly broke the furious jet of vapor. She had found the
only means of putting an end to the terrible scene. For, notwithstanding
his menace, she knew that Maud's husband always recoiled before the
young girl, the friend of his wife, of whose delicacy and sensibility he
was aware.

Gorka was capable of the most dangerous and most cruel deeds, in an
excess of passion augmented by vanity.

He had in him a chivalrous element which would paralyze his frenzy
before Alba. As for the immorality of that combination of defence
which involved her daughter in her rupture with a vindictive lover, the
Countess did not think of that. She often said: "She is my comrade, she
is my friend.".... And she thought so. To lean upon her in that critical
moment was only natural to her. In the tempest of indignation which
shook Gorka, the sudden appeal to innocent Alba appeared to him the last
degree of cynicism. During the short space of time which elapsed between
the departure of the footman and the arrival of the young girl, he only
uttered these words, repeating them as he paced the floor, while his
former mistress defied him with her bold gaze:

"I scorn you, I scorn you; ah, how I scorn you!" Then, when he heard the
door open: "We will resume our conversation, Mada