Now she spoke quite firmly: her face was very pale and her eyes certainly had a wild look in them. With a mechanical gesture she pushed the unruly strands of her hair from her moist forehead. Old Madame gazed at her for a moment or two in silence, then she broke into harsh, ironical laughter.
“Ah ça, ma mie!” she said, “Will you tell me, I pray, what is the exact meaning of this melodramatic scene?”
“I have already told you,” Marcelle replied more calmly, “if you wish to speak with Bertrand, we’ll call him, and you shall speak with him here.”
“Bertrand and I understand one another. We prefer to talk together, when we are alone.”
“The matter that concerns him concerns us all equally. You may speak with him if you wish—but only in my presence.”
“But, nom de Dieu!” old Madame exclaimed, “will you tell me by what right you propose to stand between me and my grandson?”
“By the right which you gave me, Madame,” Marcelle replied with slow deliberation, “when you stood between your son and me.”
“Marcelle!” the old woman cried, and her harsh voice for the first time had in it a quiver of latent passion.
“The evil which you wrought that night,” Marcelle went on slowly, “shall not find its echo now. I was really a fool then. Such monsters as you had never been within my ken.”
“Silence, you idiot!” old Madame broke in, throwing into her tone and into her attitude all the authority which she knew so well how to exert. But Marcelle would not be silenced. She was just one of those weak, down-trodden creatures who, when roused, are as formidable in their wrath as they are obstinate in their purpose. She spoke now as if for the past twenty years she had been longing for this relief and the words tumbled out of her mouth like an avalanche falls down the side of a mountain.