Her resentment, dammed so long for want of opportunity, carried her away.

To speak soberly and by the card, the woman was a hideous thing to see and hear; for in her wrath at me, she spared not to set forth in unshamed plainness her designs, nor to declare of what rewards, promised by the duke, my interference had gone near to rob her and still rendered uncertain.

Her voice rose, for all her efforts to keep it low, and she mingled foul words of the duchess and of me with scornful curses on the virtue of her daughter.

I could say nothing; I stood there wondering that such creatures lived, amazed that Marie Delhasse must call such an one her mother.
Then in the midst of her tirade, the duke, roused without Bontet's help, came out of his room, and waited a moment listening to the flow of the torrent.

And, strange as it seemed, he smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders, and I found myself smiling also; for disgusting as the woman was, she was amusing, too.