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160 "My child!"

"Mamma!"

"I managed to slip away, just for a moment. My dear child!"

"Eduard is here, Mamma. He's downstairs. He wants to take me away with him. He is waiting till the people are gone. He was shouting so. . . ."

"I heard him."

"We told him to be quiet. I won't go with him, Mamma. I'll stay with you, I'll stay with you. He struck me!"

"The cad!" cried Henri, pale in the face.

"The dirty blackguard!" said the old nurse.

Bertha, very pale, shut her eyes, heaved a deep sigh:

"My child, my dear child . . . be sensible, make it up."

"But he is brutal to me, Mamma!"

She flung herself, sobbing, into Bertha's arms.

"My darling!" Bertha wept. "I can't stay away any longer."

She released herself, went away; her dress rustled down the stairs. Her guests were sitting in the drawing-room; one or two looked at her strangely, because she had absented herself. In a moment she was once more the tactful, charming hostess.

Marianne, with a smile on her face, had gone to Van Naghel's study, where the men were having their coffee, smoking: