Eve was leaning on a pier-table, as if overcome; and indeed, the least sorrow bore her down, so weak at heart she was, ever ready to weep in her naive and perfect egotism.

Why was it that her daughter thus hated her, and did her utmost to disturb that last happy spell of love in which her heart lingered?
She looked at Camille, grieved rather than irritated; and the unfortunate idea came to her of making a remark about her dress at the very moment when the girl was on the point of following the others into the larger drawing-room.
"It's quite wrong of you, my dear," said she, "to persist in dressing like an old woman.

It doesn't improve you a bit." As Eve spoke, her soft eyes, those of a courted and worshipped handsome woman, clearly expressed the compassion she felt for that ugly, deformed girl, whom she had never been able to regard as a daughter.

Was it possible that she, with her sovereign beauty, that beauty which she herself had ever adored and nursed, making it her one care, her one religion--was it possible that she had given birth to such a graceless creature, with a dark, goatish profile, one shoulder higher than the other, and a pair of endless arms such as hunchbacks often have?
All her grief and all her shame at having had such a child became apparent in the quivering of her voice.
Camille, however, had stopped short, as if struck in the face with a whip.

Then she came back to her mother and the horrible explanation began with these simple words spoken in an undertone: "You consider that I dress badly?
Well, you ought to have paid some attention to me, have seen that my gowns suited your taste, and have taught me your secret of looking beautiful!" Eve, with her dislike of all painful feeling, all quarrelling and bitter words, was already regretting her attack.