With a sinking heart, Valentine had foreseen this tirade.  She felt that it was only a just punishment for her conduct.  Knowing that the indignation of her mother was just, she meekly hung her head like a repentant sinner at the bar of justice.

But this submissive silence only exasperated the angry countess.

“Why do you not answer me?” she screamed with flashing eyes and a threatening gesture.  “Speak! you——­”

“What can I say, mother?”

“Say, miserable girl?  Say that they lied when they accused a La Verberie of disgracing her name!  Speak:  defend yourself!”

Valentine mournfully shook her head, but said nothing.

“It is true, then?” shrieked the countess, beside herself with rage; “what they said is true?”

“Forgive me, mother:  have mercy!  I am so miserable!” moaned the poor girl.

“Forgive! have mercy!  Do you dare to tell me I have not been deceived by this gossip to-day?  Do you have the insolence to stand there and glory in your shame?  Whose blood flows in your veins?  You seem to be ignorant that some faults should be persistently denied, no matter how glaring the evidence against them.  And you are my daughter!  Can you not understand that an ignominious confession like this should never be forced from a woman by any human power?  But no, you have lovers, and unblushingly avow it.  Why not run over the town and tell everybody?  Boast of it, glory in it:  it would be something new!”

“Alas! you are pitiless, mother!”

“Did you ever have any pity on me, my dutiful daughter?  Did it ever occur to you that your disgrace would kill me?  No:  I suppose you and your lover have often laughed at my blind confidence; for I had confidence in you:  I had perfect faith in you.  I believed you to be as innocent as when you lay in your cradle.  And it has come to this:  drunken men make a jest of your name in a billiard-room, then fight about you, and kill each other.  I intrusted to you the honor of our name, and what did you do with it?  You handed it over to the first-comer!”

This was too much for Valentine.  The words, “first-comer,” wounded her pride more than all the other abuse heaped upon her.  She tried to protest against this unmerited insult.

“Ah, I have made a mistake in supposing this to be the first one,” said the countess.  “Among your many lovers, you choose the heir of our worst enemy, the son of those detested Clamerans.  Among all, you select a coward who publicly boasted of your favors; a wretch who tried to avenge himself for the heroism of our ancestors by ruining you and me—­an old woman and a child!”

“No, mother, you do him wrong.  He loved me, and hopes for your consent.”

“Wants to marry you, does he?  Never, never shall that come to pass!  I would rather see you lower than you are, in the gutter, laid in your coffin, than see you the wife of that man!”

Thus the hatred of the countess was expressed very much in the terms which the old marquis had used to his son.