"It was Thérèse d'Ormeval."
The accusation was hurled forth in an outburst of rage and with a fiercely threatening gesture.
"You wretched creature!" exclaimed madame d'Ormeval, rushing at her. "Go! Leave the room! Oh, what a wretch the woman is!"
Hortense was trying to restrain her, but Rénine whispered:
"Let them be. It's what I wanted ... to pitch them one against the other and so to let in the day-light."
Madame Astaing had made a convulsive effort to ward off the insult with a jest; and she sniggered:
"A wretched creature? Why? Because I have accused you?"
"Why? For every reason! You're a wretched creature! You hear what I say, Germaine: you're a wretch!"
Thérèse d'Ormeval was repeating the insult as though it afforded her some relief. Her anger was abating. Very likely also she no longer had the strength to keep up the struggle; and it was Madame Astaing who returned to the attack, with her fists clenched and her face distorted and suddenly aged by fully twenty years:
"You! You dare to insult me, you! You after the murder you have committed! You dare to lift up your head when the man whom you killed is lying in there on his death-bed! Ah, if one of us is a wretched creature, it's you, Thérèse, and you know it! You have killed your husband! You have killed your husband!"