Struggling with this twinge, it was somewhat sharply that he dismissed the attendant who had brought him in.
'You make yourself at home, _chez moi_,' she said, a little ruffled both by his tone of command and by the glance he had thrown upon the chair.
'Madam,' replied Otto, 'I am here so seldom that I have almost the rights of a stranger.' 'You choose your own associates, Frederic,' she said.
'I am here to speak of it,' he returned.

'It is now four years since we were married; and these four years, Seraphina, have not perhaps been happy either for you or for me.

I am well aware I was unsuitable to be your husband.

I was not young, I had no ambition, I was a trifler; and you despised me, I dare not say unjustly.

But to do justice on both sides, you must bear in mind how I have acted.