"No!"
"Your obstinacy is most absurd; and you think to lay down the law to me?"
"I act as I feel I ought."
"By refusing to go to Madame de Hansfeld's?"
"Yes, Charles."
"I am not in a humour to guess riddles, and I will therefore end our conversation in two words: if you persist in your refusal, you shall never see your father again as long as you live, but in a week you shall return to Lorraine, which you shall never again quit; I have a right to fix your place of residence. You know my will is inflexible, and therefore reflect in time."
Bertha bowed her head without any reply. Her husband could, in truth, send her to Lorraine, separate her from her father, of whom she was the sole support, as, by a just feeling of pride, Pierre Raimond refused the pension which De Brévannes had hitherto allowed him. This was not all: by obeying her husband, Bertha could conceal from the engraver the reason why she continued to see him; for he would a thousand times have preferred that his daughter should go to Lorraine, than that she should obey her husband's commands, when those commands brought her into contact with Arnold.
One moment she was on the point of confessing to De Brévannes the motive of her resistance; but reflecting on the ferocious jealousy of her husband, his anger against the engraver, from whom he would, perhaps, separate her for ever, she rejected this idea.
Unfortunately for Bertha, there was no mid course between the two alternatives. Her first impulse had been to resist with determination her husband's desires, because the tears she had shed at the remembrance of Arnold enlightened her as to the danger of this love, hitherto so calm, and thus she was forced to bow before so fatal a necessity. She replied to her husband, with a tone of despair,—
"You exact it, sir, and I obey."