“Oh, how Anna pitied the poor, repentant woman, writhing with pain and remorse, and how she loathed the man who stood revealed to her just as he never had been before—the monster who had wrought such misery. And she shrank from Eugenie, too; but pitied her as well, for there was much of the true woman left in her still, and Anna forced herself to lay her hands on the bowed head of the sorrowing woman, to whom the touch of those hands seemed to be life-giving and reassuring for there was a storm of sobs, and tears, and fierce gesticulations, and then the impetuous and excitable Frenchwoman grew calm, and something of her old self was on her face as she shrugged her shoulders significantly, and said: “‘Oh, _Mon Dieu!_ such a scene as I’ve made, and frightened you, child. How monsieur would have enjoyed that; he would call it my high art in acting. Curse him! I’ll act for him no more;’ and the hard, bitter look of hatred came back to her face for an instant, then left it again as she said: ‘I’ve told you my story, little one, who seems like Agatha. Now tell me yours; where you met him; why you married, and how you came here shut up, a prisoner. Maybe I can help you. Who knows? I owe him something for his wrong to Agatha.’ “But for this hint that possibly Eugenie could help her, Anna might have shrank from confiding her story to her, but this new revelation of her husband’s character had so increased her horror and dislike of him, that she readily seized upon anything which offered the shadow of a chance to escape from a life she hated; and conquering all feelings of distrust and aversion for one who had openly confessed herself a bad woman, she began the story, and told first of her New England home, her poverty, and her life in the dingy shoe-shop, with the sickening smell of leather and wax. At this point Eugenie started forward, exclaiming joyfully, and this time in her broken English: “‘Then you are not _no-bil-i-te_. You be very _people_ as me. _J’en suis bien aise._ I hate _no-bil-i-te_, who will trample such as we. I am pleased you are much the people. I will help you more.’ “‘You mistake,’ Anna cried, eagerly, ‘I am _nobility_, as you call it. We are _all_ nobility in America, or can be. We are all sovereigns by right. No matter what we do, we can rise.’ “Anna grew very warm with this flash of national and personal pride, while Eugenie looked at her curiously, wondering, no doubt, how a born sovereign could work in wax and leather, but she was too good-natured and polite to dispute the point, and answered, laughingly: “‘_Pardonnez moi, madame. Je me trompe. En Amerique vous—vous_—what you call it? You all expect to marry kings and emperors, and be mi-lady some time—_oui—oui—je l’aime beaucoup_, but go on, I wait to hear how monsieur came——’