“Ye are good at rebuking your neighbours. But ye had better have kept your daughter from lying in wait for other women’s husbands!” “Peace, peace, good woman,” Hanka interfered, foreseeing what was coming; but the Voyt’s wife only grew more enraged. “Oh, I will say my say now, if never again!—Her, who has poisoned my life so, I never will forgive till my dying day!” “Well, then, say your say! A cur will bark louder than you can!” Dominikova growled. She took it coolly, but Yagna flushed red as a beetroot. Yet, though overwhelmed with shame, she nevertheless took refuge in reckless stubbornness; and as if to spite the other, she held her head up, and fastened her eyes upon her enemy with a taunting expression and a malicious smile. The look, the smile, infuriated the other, and she denounced her lubricity in a torrent of invectives. “Your words are frenzy, you are drunk with hate!” the old dame said, to draw her anger away; “your husband will answer grievously before God for my daughter’s misfortune.” “Misfortune!—Aye, ’tis an innocent young maiden he has seduced!... Ha, such a maiden that with everyone and under every green bush....” “Hold your wicked tongue, or—blind as I am—my hands will surely find their way to your hair!” the old woman cried threateningly, her hand tightening its grasp on her stick. “Oh, will you try?—Only touch me! Only dare!” she repeated, with a defiant scream. “Ha! will she, who has waxed fat upon wrongs done to her neighbours, venture now to beset and pester them—as hard to shake off as a bur?” “Say, you, in what thing have I ever done you wrong?” “That you will know, when your husband shall be condemned to jail!” The Voyt’s wife rushed at her with lifted fists; but Hanka caught her back, and said sternly to them both: “Women, for God’s sake!—Would ye turn my cabin into a tavern?” This instantly put a stop to their brawl. Both breathed hard and were panting. Tears came streaming from under the bandages that covered Dominikova’s eyes, but she was first to come back to her senses, and say, sitting down with hands clasped and a deep sigh: “God be merciful to me a sinner!” The Voyt’s wife had rushed out in a fury; but, returning, she put her head in at the window, crying out to Hanka: “I tell you, drive that wanton from your house! And do so while there yet is time, lest you rue it sorely! Let her not stay one hour more beneath your roof, or that hell-born pest will make you go yourself! O Hanka, defend yourself—and for that, be merciless, be without pity for her. She is only lying in wait to entrap your Antek.... Don’t you see what a hell she now prepares for you?” She leant further into the room and, stretching her fist towards Yagna, shouted with the most intense hatred: