“Why do you not answer me?” she screamed with flashing eyes and a threatening gesture. “Speak! you——”
“What can I say, mother?”
“Say, miserable girl? Say that they lied when they accused a La Verberie of disgracing her name! Speak: defend yourself!”
Valentine mournfully shook her head, but said nothing.
“It is true, then?” shrieked the countess, beside herself with rage; “what they said is true?”
“Forgive me, mother: have mercy! I am so miserable!” moaned the poor girl.
“Forgive! have mercy! Do you dare to tell me I have not been deceived by this gossip to-day? Do you have the insolence to stand there and glory in your shame? Whose blood flows in your veins? You seem to be ignorant that some faults should be persistently denied, no matter how glaring the evidence against them. And you are my daughter! Can you not understand that an ignominious confession like this should never be forced from a woman by any human power? But no, you have lovers, and unblushingly avow it. Why not run over the town and tell everybody? Boast of it, glory in it: it would be something new!”
“Alas! you are pitiless, mother!”
“Did you ever have any pity on me, my dutiful daughter? Did it ever occur to you that your disgrace would kill me? No: I suppose you and your lover have often laughed at my blind confidence; for I had confidence in you: I had perfect faith in you. I believed you to be as innocent as when you lay in your cradle. And it has come to this: drunken men make a jest of your name in a billiard-room, then fight about you, and kill each other. I intrusted to you the honor of our name, and what did you do with it? You handed it over to the first-comer!”
This was too much for Valentine. The words, “first-comer,” wounded her pride more than all the other abuse heaped upon her. She tried to protest against this unmerited insult.