"
Lisbeth lifted up Hortense and kissed her enthusiastically.
"My dear Hortense, stand firm," she whispered.
The Baroness embraced Lisbeth with the vehemence of a woman who sees
herself avenged. The whole family stood in perfect silence round the
father, who had wit enough to know what that silence implied. A storm
of fury swept across his brow and face with evident signs; the veins
swelled, his eyes were bloodshot, his flesh showed patches of color.
Adeline fell on her knees before him and seized his hands.
"My dear, forgive, my dear!"
"You loathe me!" cried the Baron--the cry of his conscience.
For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always
ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with
the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our
tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected
anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the
torturer.
"Our children," he went on, to retract the avowal, "turn at last to be
our enemies--"
"Father!" Victorin began.
"You dare to interrupt your father!" said the Baron in a voice of
thunder, glaring at his son.
"Father, listen to me," Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the
voice of a puritanical deputy.
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