“Shame, woman! Offer Christian Bergh crows! If I did right I would take you and your seven hell’s—”
“Thousand devils, Christian Bergh! don’t swear. Nobody but I swears here.”
“Do you think I am afraid of you, hag? Don’t you think I know how you got your seven estates?”
“Silence, captain!”
“When Altringer died he gave them to your husband because you had been his mistress.”
“Will you be silent?”
“Because you had been such a faithful wife, Margareta Samzelius. And the major took the seven estates and let you manage them and pretended not to know. And the devil arranged it all; but now comes the end for you.”
The major’s wife sits down; she is pale and trembling. She assents in a strange, low voice.
“Yes, now it is the end for me, and it is your doing, Christian Bergh.”