may be proud of having tamed a bear, and yet sicken at his captive's
odour. And above all, she had certain jealous intimations that the
man was false and the deception double. True, she falsely trifled
with his love; but he, perhaps, was only trifling with her vanity.
The insolence of his late mimicry, and the odium of her own position
as she sat and watched it, lay besides like a load upon her
conscience. She met Otto almost with a sense of guilt, and yet she
welcomed him as a deliverer from ugly things.

But the wheels of an interview are at the mercy of a thousand ruts;
and even at Otto's entrance, the first jolt occurred. Gondremark,
he saw, was gone; but there was the chair drawn close for
consultation; and it pained him not only that this man had been
received, but that he should depart with such an air of secrecy.
Struggling with this twinge, it was somewhat sharply that he
dismissed the attendant who had brought him in.

'You make yourself at home, CHEZ MOI,' she said, a little ruffled
both by his tone of command and by the glance he had thrown upon the
chair.

'Madam,' replied Otto, 'I am here so seldom that I have almost the
rights of a stranger.'

'You choose your own associates, Frederic,' she said.

'I am here to speak of it,' he returned. 'It is now four years
since we were married; and these four years, Seraphina, have not
perhaps been happy either for you or for me. I am well aware I was
unsuitable to be your husband. I was not young, I had no ambition,