“Here you are!” exclaimed Count Ville-Handry, restored to a certain degree of calmness by the very excess of his wrath,—“here you are!”
“Yes, father.”
“Where have you been?”
She had at a glance taken in the whole room; and at the sight of the new countess, and those whom she called her accomplices, all her resentment arose. She smiled haughtily, and said carelessly,—
“I have been at the Bois de Boulogne. In the morning I went out to make some purchases; later, knowing that the Duchess of Champdoce is a little unwell, and does not go out, I went to lunch with her; after that, as the weather was so fine”—
Count Ville-Handry could endure it no longer.
Seizing his daughter by the wrists, he lifted her bodily, and, dragging her up to the Countess Sarah, he hurled out,—
“On your knees, unhappy child! on your knees, and ask the best and noblest of women to pardon you for all these insults!”
“You hurt me terribly, father,” said the young girl coldly.
But the countess had already thrown herself between them.