“This is unheard of!” he growled with a curse. “This is incomprehensible! Such perversity has never been known before.”
He went and stood before his daughter, his arms crossed, and cried with a voice of thunder,—
“Wretch! Will you disgrace us all?”
She made no reply. Immovable like a statue, she did not tremble under the storm. Besides, what could she do? Defend herself? She would not stoop to do that. Repeat the impudent avowals of the countess? What would be the use? Did she not know beforehand that the count would not believe her? In the meantime, grim Mrs. Brian had taken a seat by the side of her beloved Sarah.
“I,” she said, “if I were, for my sins, afflicted with such a daughter, I would get her a husband as soon as possible.”
“I have thought of that,” replied the count; “and I believe I have even hit upon an arrangement which”—
But, when he saw his daughter’s watchful eye fixed upon him, he paused, and, pointing towards the door, said to her brutally,—
“You are in the way here!”
Without saying a word, she went out, much less troubled by her father’s fury than by the strange confessions which the countess had made. She only now began to measure the full extent of her step-mother’s hatred, and knew that she was too practical a woman to waste her time by making idle speeches. Therefore, if she had stated that she loved Daniel,—a statement which Henrietta believed to be untrue,—if she had impudently confessed that she coveted her husband’s fortune, she had a purpose in view. What was that purpose? How could any one unearth the truth from among such a mass of falsehood and deception?
At all events, the scene was strange enough to confound any one’s judgment. And when Henrietta, that evening, found an opportunity to tell M. de Brevan what had happened, he trembled in his chair, and was so overwhelmed with surprise, that he forgot his precautions, and exclaimed almost aloud,—