"But I will not pardon him," said Madame Staubach. "It is false; and if he dares to repeat such words, he shall rue them as long as he lives. Linda, this is to go for nothing,—for nothing. Perhaps it is not unnatural that he should have some suspicion." Poor Madame Staubach, agitated by divided feelings, hardly knew on which side to use her eloquence.
"I should think not indeed," said Peter, in triumph. "Unnatural! Ha! ha!"
"I will put his eyes out of him if he laughs like that," said Tetchen, looking as though she were ready to put her threat into execution upon the instant.
"Peter Steinmarc, you are mistaken in this," said Madame Staubach. "You had better let me see you in private."
"Mistaken, am I? Oh! am I mistaken in thinking that she was alone during the whole night with Ludovic? A man does not like such mistakes as that. I tell you that I have done with her,—done with her,—done with her! She is a bad piece. She does not ring sound. Madame Staubach, I respect you, and am sorry for you; but you know the truth as well as I do."
"Man," she said to him, "you are ungrateful, cruel, and unjust."
"Aunt Charlotte," said Linda, "he has done me the only favour that I could accept at his hands. It is true that I have done that which, had he been a man, would have prevented him from seeking to make me his wife. All that is true. I own it."
"There; you hear her, Madame Staubach."
"And you shall hear me by-and-by," said Madame Staubach.
"But it is no thought of that that has made him give me up," continued Linda. "He knows that he never could have got my hand. I told him that I would die first, and he has believed me. It is very well that he should give me up; but no one else, no other man alive, would have been base enough to have spoken to any woman as he has spoken to me."