Poor girl! I did not allow her much, but with it she managed to give her son a decent education.

He has now grown up, and whatever happens, his future is safe." Had M.de Mussidan and his wife been less deeply engaged in this hideous recital, they would have heard the stifled sobs that came from the adjoining room.
The Count felt a certain kind of savage pleasure in venting the rage, that had for years been suppressed, upon the shrinking woman before him.
"Would it not be a cruel injustice, madame, to draw a comparison between you and this unhappy girl?
Have you always been deaf to the whisperings of conscience?
and have you never thought of the future punishment which most certainly awaits you?
for you have failed in the duties of daughter, wife, and mother." Generally the Countess cared little for her husband's reproaches, well deserved as they might be, but to-day she quailed before him.
"With your entrance into my life," continued the Count, "came shame and misfortune.

When people saw you so gay and careless under the oak-trees of your ancestral home, who could have suspected that your heart contained a dark secret?
When my only wish was to win you for my wife, how did I know that you were weaving a hideous conspiracy against me?
Even when so young, you were a monster of dissimulation and hypocrisy.
Guilt never overshadowed your brow, nor did falsehood dim the frankness of your eyes.

On the day of our marriage I mentally reproached myself for any unworthiness.

Wretched fool that I was, I was happy beyond all power of expression, when you, madame, completed the measure of your guilt by adding infidelity to it." "It is false," murmured the Countess.