The grief of Bertha touched him the more, as he remembered the recent wrongs he had done her, and all the humiliating things he had said to her rose in mental array; and he could not conceal from himself, that his conduct was by no means what it should he. The more she appeared dependent on him, the more incumbent was it on him to spare her delicacy, and not load her with coarse and cruel reproaches. And, if the whole truth must be told, we would endeavour to lay open one of the thousand hidden folds of the human heart, or rather of human organisation, and induce the reader to believe in one of those sudden brutal rekindlings of passion peculiar to man alone; and that, too, after the most bitter, degrading, and insulting recriminations. Bertha, overwhelmed by the painful emotions produced by the late cruel scene, had fallen back into her chair. As she sat with drooping head, her beautifully formed shoulders, white and polished as ivory, yet tinged with the warm flush of her recently excited feelings, suddenly fixed the attention of M. de Brévannes. As is frequently the case, he had a thousand times forgotten the lovely being he called his wife for creatures unworthy of a comparison with her, even as regarded the mere matter of beauty. Since the scene to which Bertha had alluded, when speaking of the _femme-de-chambre_ she had been compelled to dismiss, the married pair had observed a mixture of coldness and restraint towards each other; but the love of Bertha for her husband had received its death-blow. At the sight of his wife's deep distress, M. de Brévannes, by one of those gross ideas inherent in the minds of such men, imagined, that by complimenting the poor victim of his brutality, upon the power and brilliancy of her beauty, she would readily pardon him his late unfeeling conduct; he, therefore, silently approached his weeping wife, and, throwing his arm around her waist, exclaimed,-- "Come, my pretty Bertha, be a good girl--give me a kiss--and let's be friends." It is impossible to depict the expression of mingled disgust, shame, and profound grief, exhibited in the countenance of the suffering wife; she, however, hastily freed herself from the hold of M. de Brévannes, and rising, exclaimed,-- "Surely I might have been spared this last insult! It is, however, one I neither can nor will endure." And with these words Bertha rushed into her chamber, doubly locking the door after her. We shall not attempt to paint the rage of M. de Brévannes, or the mingled wrath and hatred with which he pursued his unfortunate wife. CHAPTER VIII THE RETURN The immense and ancient Hôtel Lambert, occupied by the Prince and Princess de Hansfield, was situated in the Rue Saint Louis en l'Ile; and its garden-walls formed the boundary of the Quai d'Anjou, which is separated from the arsenal by the divisions of the Seine surrounding the Isle Louviers.