But at that word the woman caught fire, blazed up, and outdid him in rage. She was a middle-aged woman and spare, with a face naturally pale and refined, and an air of pride that peeped even through the neat poverty of her dress. But at that word she shook her hands in his face and her eyes blazed.
"Shameless?" she retorted. "No, but shameful; and through whom? Through your son, your villain, your craven of a son who hides now! Through your base-born tradesman of a son who dare face neither woman nor man."
"Silence!" the Burgomaster cried. "Silence!"
She broke off, but only to throw her whole soul into one breathless cry.
"Will he marry her?" she panted; and she held out her hands to him, palm uppermost. "Will he marry her? In a word."
"No," the Burgomaster answered grimly.
She flung up her arms.
"Then beware!" she cried wildly, and for the first time she raised her voice to the pitch of those other shrews. "Beware! You and yours have brought us to shame; but the end is not yet, the end is not yet! You do not know us."
At that he rallied himself. "I may not know you yet," he said hardily, and indeed brutally; "but I know this, that such things as these come, woman, of people setting themselves up to be better than their neighbours, when they are as poor as church mice. They come of slighting honest fellows and setting caps at those above you. Your daughter—or you, woman, if you like it better—set the trap, and you are caught in it yourselves. That is all."
"You wretch!" she gasped. "And he—will not marry her?"