And you have neither love nor pity, nor respect for me, if you detain me." "Mademoiselle!" was the stern reply, "I FORBID you to move.

Be good enough to sit there;" with which the baroness pointed imperiously to a sofa at the other side of the room.

"Josephine, go to your room." Josephine retired, casting more than one anxious glance over her shoulder.
Rose looked this way and that in despair and terror; but ended by sinking, more dead than alive, into the seat indicated; and even as she drooped, pale and trembling, on that sofa, Edouard Riviere, worn and agitated, entered the room, and bowed low to them all, without a word.
The baroness looked at him, and then at her daughter, as much as to say, now I have got you; deceive me now if you can.

"Rose, my dear," said this terrible old woman, affecting honeyed accents, "don't you see Monsieur Riviere ?" The poor girl at this challenge rose with difficulty, and courtesied humbly to Edouard.
He bowed to her, and stealing a rapid glance saw her pallor and distress; and that showed him she was not so hardened as he had thought.
"You have not come to see us lately," said the baroness, quietly, "yet you have been in the neighborhood." These words puzzled Edouard.

Was the old lady all in the dark, then?
As a public man he had already learned to be on his guard; so he stammered out, "That he had been much occupied with public duties." Madame de Beaurepaire despised this threadbare excuse too much to notice it at all.