The price _Mrs. Alving_ had to pay for her yoke, her duty and obedience, staggers even _Dr. Manders_, when she reveals to him the martyrdom she had endured those long years. _Mrs. Alving._ You have now spoken out, Pastor Manders; and to-morrow you are to speak publicly in memory of my husband. I shall not speak to-morrow. But now I will speak out a little to you, as you have spoken to me.... I want you to know that after nineteen years of marriage my husband remained as dissolute in his desires as he was when you married us. After Oswald's birth, I thought Alving seemed to be a little better. But it did not last long. And then I had to struggle twice as hard, fighting for life or death, so that nobody should know what sort of a man my child's father was. I had my little son to bear it for. But when the last insult was added; when my own servant-maid---- Then I swore to myself: This shall come to an end. And so I took the upper hand in the house--the whole control over him and over everything else. For now I had a weapon against him, you see; he dared not oppose me. It was then that Oswald was sent from home. He was in his seventh year, and was beginning to observe and ask questions, as children do. That I could not bear. I thought the child must get poisoned by merely breathing the air in this polluted home. That was why I placed him out. And now you can see, too, why he was never allowed to set foot inside his home so long as his father lived. No one knows what it has cost me.... From the day after to-morrow it shall be for me as though he who is dead had never lived in this house. No one shall be here but my boy and his mother. (_From within the dining-room comes the noise of a chair overturned, and at the same moment is heard:_) _Regina (sharply, but whispering)._ Oswald! take care! are you mad? let me go! _Mrs. Alving (starts in terror)._ Ah! (_She stares wildly toward the half-opened door. Oswald is heard coughing and humming inside.)_ _Manders (excited)._ What in the world is the matter? What is it, Mrs. Alving? _Mrs. Alving (hoarsely)._ Ghosts! The couple from the conservatory has risen again! Ghosts, indeed! _Mrs. Alving_ sees this but too clearly when she discovers that though she did not want _Oswald_ to inherit a single penny from the purchase money _Captain Alving_ had paid for her, all her sacrifice did not save _Oswald_ from the poisoned heritage of his father. She learns soon enough that her beloved boy had inherited a terrible disease from his father, as a result of which he will never again be able to work. She also finds out that, for all her freedom, she has remained in the clutches of Ghosts, and that she has fostered in _Oswald's_ mind an ideal of his father, the more terrible because of her own loathing for the man. Too late she realizes her fatal mistake: