"I have it! Now, I remember, a post-chaise arrived almost at the same time we did, and stopped before the opposite house. We are followed--perhaps, even from Lorraine. Oh, I am sure--quite, quite sure, some disgraceful mystery is attached to all these circumstances; but depend upon it, wretched creature! that I will discover it, and drag the infamous participators to the shame and ignominy they deserve." So much brutality and insult, expressed in a tone and manner so undeserved, stung Bertha to the quick. Spite of her quietness and habitual resignation, her self-pride, her delicacy, seemed outraged; and, with a firm and dignified manner, she said to her husband,-- "You are wrong, Charles, to speak to me thus. You may exhaust my patience, and force me to say things that, for the sake of your self-respect, I would fain be silent upon." "Oh! oh! what! threats, too?" "No, Charles, I utter no threats; but it is scarcely generous in you, who have given me so many just causes of complaint and sorrow, to accuse me, and treat me thus ignominiously, only from an absurd suspicion." "Upon my word, madam, you are coming out quite a new character, as well as with language." "Charles, I am weary of suffering your unjust reproaches in silence, when I might myself prefer against you causes of complaint, unfortunately too well founded." "Better, and better, I protest!" "You tell me, Charles, that I ought to shut my eyes to your conduct. I have always done so; but is it my fault if the account of your irregularities has reached my ears, even amid the solitude in which I live? Is it not the voice of public report, and the insolence of the wretched creature I drove from my house a week ago, that----" "Not another word, madam!" "Pardon me, Charles, but I must and will speak. I wish not to presume upon the position my devotion to my duties had obtained for me, I merely desire that you should respect it. I am willing to shut my eyes on errors so low, so degrading, that they are beneath my anger; but I will not suffer you thus unjustly to trample me in the dust." "Upon my word, madam, your audacity confounds me. You, doubtless, wish me to understand, that four years of fidelity and respect for your duties have fully repaid all obligation to me, and that now you are free to act as you think proper. Is it possible that you can have effaced from your memory all I have done for you and yours; that I took you from absolute beggary; that your father exists upon my generosity; and that I have even carried my goodness so far as to have once offered to allow him to reside under my roof?"