Lisbeth lifted up Hortense and kissed her enthusiastically.
“My dear Hortense, stand firm,” she whispered.
The Baroness embraced Lisbeth with the vehemence of a woman who sees herself avenged. The whole family stood in perfect silence round the father, who had wit enough to know what that silence implied. A storm of fury swept across his brow and face with evident signs; the veins swelled, his eyes were bloodshot, his flesh showed patches of color. Adeline fell on her knees before him and seized his hands.
“My dear, forgive, my dear!”
“You loathe me!” cried the Baron—the cry of his conscience.
For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the torturer.
“Our children,” he went on, to retract the avowal, “turn at last to be our enemies—”
“Father!” Victorin began.
“You dare to interrupt your father!” said the Baron in a voice of thunder, glaring at his son.
“Father, listen to me,” Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the voice of a puritanical deputy. “I know the respect I owe you too well ever to fail in it, and you will always find me the most respectful and submissive of sons.”