"'Could not help it!'" repeated Lady Ingram, contemptuously. "Cannot you help anything you choose? Oh, yes! it was the Countess des Ferrières,--she had lost £30,000 and her estates, every livre she had, even to the earrings which she wore, so of course she was ruined. But you quite mistake, my dear--you need not have felt terrified. You are in error if you suppose that swearing is interdicted to men, and even women, of quality.[6] Quite the contrary, it is rather modish than otherwise. A few gentle oaths, such as"--(and Lady Ingram gave a short list)--"are quite admissible in such circumstances. You would hear them from the lips of the best families in France. If it were not modish, of course it would be highly improper; but you are entirely mistaken if you suppose it so. Any of those I have mentioned would be quite proper--for you, even. I have heard much stronger words than those from the Duchess de Berry, and she is younger than you are. But mercy on us, child! what eyes you make!" They were gleaming like stars. Lady Ingram a words had lighted up a fire behind them, and every feeling of timidity was burnt up in the blaze of its indignation. "My Lady Ingram!" said Celia, with a dignity in her voice and manner which her step-mother had never seen her assume, and believed to be quite foreign to her nature, "I did not come to Paris either to deny my religion or to outrage my God. In all matters which concern Him not, you have moulded me at your will. I thought that you took to me the place of my dead father and mother, and I have obeyed you as I would have obeyed them. But into the sanctuary of my soul you cannot penetrate; on the threshold of the temple even you must pause. God is more to me than father or mother, and at the risk of your displeasure--at the risk of my life if needs be--I must obey Him. 'The Lord sitteth upon the flood, yea, the Lord sitteth King forever;'[7] and 'He will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain!'"[8]