“You wish! you! What right have you to wish, I should like to know? You are in my house, and it isn’t for you to wish! Who do you think you are, eh?” shrieked Betsy, exciting herself to a towering passion. “Do you imagine you are a princess, and can do exactly as you like? or do you fancy that I am going to be dictated to by you in the presence of strangers?”
“Don’t you think I know what to say without your valuable advice? I don’t want your advice, so there! And I assure you that in future, whenever I hear you speak in that disgraceful way about Vincent, I shall make you hold your tongue. Thus much I assure you.”
“Indeed, you assure me—you do, eh? But I don’t want your assurance, I tell you. I have no intention to trouble myself in the least about your idiotic tenderness for Vincent! Perhaps it was he from whom you learnt the politeness to interrupt one among strangers as you dared to do to me? I can’t understand how you can have the impertinence, I can’t really. Why, they must have thought you were crazy. Well, if you are, that must be your excuse! Fancy calling me vulgar; and what are you, pray? you, who forget the very rudiments of politeness, and have——”
“Yes, I know, I have heard it before—have had the impertinence to interrupt you, you were going to say. Do say something else for a change. But you shall see that I dare more than that, if you attack Vincent again. You think him false, do you? But I think you are false, you who invite him here yourself, and then drive him out of the house, you who for no reason whatever go on about him like a washerwoman! It is you, you who are false!”
“Keep your beautiful epithets to yourself, please.”
“Then you just keep that wretched abuse of Vincent to yourself too, please!” shrieked Eline, boiling with passion. “I won’t, do you hear, I won’t hear it any longer. I have stood it long enough for the sake of peace, but now I won’t stand it any longer! Do you understand?”
“Indeed, won’t you stand it any longer? Perhaps it was all on account of that darling Vincent that you could not stand Otto any longer either?”
“Hold your tongue!” screamed Eline.
“Or perhaps you are smitten with that reptile, and that is why you treated Otto as if he had been a schoolboy with whom you [[234]]were having a little joke? You won’t bear my abuse of Vincent any longer, will you? but I tell you that I won’t be compromised any more by you! Not bad, I’m sure! To start with, you are silly enough to break your engagement, and, out of pure caprice, without the slightest reason, you have made yourself the talk of the town; then you carry on here in my house with Vincent, as if you were in love with him, and as a wind-up you dare to be impertinent to me before strangers! Well, I am not going to bear it any longer, do you hear? If you have learnt that unmannerliness in your philosophic discourses with Vincent——”
Eline could no longer control herself. Her nerves were strung to their utmost tension, and quivered under Betsy’s insults as under the touch of rough hands. And Betsy’s allusion to Otto, to her sympathy for Vincent, which she fancied she had so successfully concealed, made her furious. She grasped Betsy’s wrists in the nervous strength of her fingers, and in a voice shrill with rage she cried—