a heap, with her
hair dishevelled and her dress disordered, breathing hard, but
uttering no sobs and shedding no tears. The stepmother,--if she might
so be called,--did not think of attempting to persuade where her
husband had failed. She feared Melmotte so thoroughly, and was so timid
in regard to her own person, that she could not understand the girl's
courage. Melmotte was to her an awful being, powerful as Satan,--whom
she never openly disobeyed, though she daily deceived him, and was
constantly detected in her deceptions. Marie seemed to her to have all
her father's stubborn, wicked courage, and very much of his power. At
the present moment she did not dare to tell the girl that she had been
wrong. But she had believed her husband when he had said that
destruction was coming, and had partly believed him when he declared
that the destruction might be averted by Marie's obedience. Her life
had been passed in almost daily fear of destruction. To Marie the last
two years of splendour had been so long that they had produced a
feeling of security. But to the elder woman the two years had not
sufficed to eradicate the remembrance of former reverses, and never
for a moment had she felt herself to be secure. At last she asked the
girl what she would like to have done for her. 'I wish he had killed
me,' Marie said, slowly dragging herself up from the sofa, and
retreating without another word to her own room.

In the meantime another scene was being acted in the room below.
Melmotte after he reached the room,--hardly made a reference to his
daughter merely saying that nothing would overcome her wicked
obstinacy. He made no allusion to his own violence, nor had Croll the
courage to expostulate with him now that the immediate danger was
over. The Great Financier again arranged the papers, just as they had
been laid out before,--as though he thought that the girl might be
brought down to sign them there. And then he went on to explain to
Croll what he had wanted to have done,--how necessary it was that the
thing should be done, and how terribly cruel it was to him that in
such a crisis of his life he should be hampered, impeded,--he did not
venture to his clerk to say ruined,--by the ill-conditioned obstinacy
of a girl! He explained very fully how absolutely the property was his
own, how totally the girl was without any right to withhold it from
him! How monstrous in its injustice was the present position of
things! In all thi