Madame Gustava seized her by the wrist. “Marianne!” “What is the matter, mother?” “Oh, Marianne, you looked so strange! I was frightened.” Marianne looked at her. She was a little, dry woman, gray and wrinkled already at fifty. She loved like a dog, without remembering knocks and blows. She was generally good-humored, and yet she made a melancholy impression. She was like a storm-whipped tree by the sea; she had never had quiet to grow. She had learned to use mean shifts, to lie when needed, and often made herself out more stupid than she was to escape taunts. In everything she was the tool of her husband. “Would you grieve much if father died?” asked Marianne. “Marianne, you are angry with your father. You are always angry with him. Why cannot everything be forgotten, since you have got a new fiancé?” “Oh, mother, it is not my fault. Can I help shuddering at him? Do you not see what he is? Why should I care for him? He is violent, he is uncouth, he has tortured you till you are prematurely old. Why is he our master? He behaves like a madman. Why shall I honor and respect him? He is not good, he is not charitable. I know that he is strong. He is capable of beating us to death at any moment. He can turn us out of the house when he will. Is that why I should love him?” But then Madame Gustava had been as never before. She had found strength and courage and had spoken weighty words. “You must take care, Marianne. It almost seems to me as if your father was right when he shut you out last winter. You shall see that you will be punished for this. You must teach yourself to bear without hating, Marianne, to suffer without revenge.” “Oh, mother, I am so unhappy.” Immediately after, they heard in the hall the sound of a heavy fall. They never knew if Melchior Sinclair had stood on the steps and through the open dining-room door had heard Marianne’s words, or if it was only over-exertion which had been the cause of the stroke. When they came out he lay unconscious. They never dared to ask him the cause. He himself never made any sign that he had heard anything. Marianne never dared to think the thought out that she had involuntarily revenged herself. But the sight of her father lying on the very steps where she had learnt to hate him took all bitterness from her heart. He soon returned to consciousness, and when he had kept quiet a few days, he was like himself—and yet not at all like.