"Your pity, pity for me!" he retorted in high dudgeon. "No one ever used that word to me before, and if you were not a woman!"—Then he turned to Marcel. "Pity! why that is contempt! If it was you who advised her to talk like that, you shall pay me for it!"
"Justify yourself if you can," retorted Marcel, boldly; "for if you have behaved as you seem to have done, you are a detestable fellow, and every honorable woman insulted by you has the right to tell you so."
"In what have I insulted her? I have insulted nobody. I saw that she was ruining herself; I tried to prevent her from——"
"From ruining herself! You are talking nonsense, my dear uncle. There are some dangers which a woman like her in whose presence we are does not know and never will know."
"Ah, yes! that is all talk! I am not to be put off with phrases learned in books, I tell you! When a woman makes appointments with a young man——"
"Appointments? Where did you pick up such foolish stuff? The man who told you that lied in his throat!"
"You are the one who lies! you are the confederate—the obliging friend!"
"Be careful, uncle! Death of my life, you'll make me lose my temper!"
"Lose your temper, if you choose. I saw you myself coming out of the theatre."
"Well, what then? My wife——"