“A drone!” she cried; “a helpless good-for-nothing! who can’t even pick up her own handkerchief! that thing wants to be mistress of this house!”

“I wish so little to be its mistress,” said Madame Thuillier, “that last night I allowed you to silence me after the first words I said in behalf of Celeste.  But I am mistress of my own property, and as I believe that Celeste will be wretched in this marriage, I keep it to use as may seem best to me.”

“Your property, indeed!” said Brigitte, with a sneer.

“Yes, that which I received from my father and my mother, and which I brought as my ‘dot’ to Monsieur Thuillier.”

“And pray who invested it, this property, and made it give you twelve thousand francs a year?”

“I have never asked you for any account of it,” said Madame Thuillier, gently.  “If it had been lost in the uses you made of it, you would never have heard a single word from me; but it has prospered, and it is just that I should have the benefit.  It is not for myself that I reserve it.”

“Perhaps not; if this is the course you take, it is not at all sure that you and I will go out of the same door long.”

“Do you mean that Monsieur Thuillier will send me away?  He must have reasons for doing that, and, thank God!  I have been a wife above reproach.”

“Viper! hypocrite! heartless creature!” cried Brigitte, coming to an end of her arguments.

“Sister,” said Madame Thuillier, “you are in my apartment—­”

“Am I, you imbecile?” cried the old maid, in a paroxysm of anger.  “If I didn’t restrain myself—­”

And she made a gesture both insulting and threatening.

Madame Thuillier rose to leave the room.

“No! you shall not go out,” cried Brigitte, pushing her down into her chair; “and till Thuillier comes home and decides what he will do with you you’ll stay locked up here.”

Just as Brigitte, her face on fire, returned to the room where she had left Madame Colleville, her brother came in.  He was radiant.

“My dear,” he said to the Megaera, not observing her fury, “everything is going on finely; the conspiracy of silence is broken; two papers, the ‘National’ and a Carlist journal, have copied articles from us, and there’s a little attack in a ministerial paper.”

“Well, all is not going on finely here,” said Brigitte, “and if it continues, I shall leave the barrack.”

“Whom are you angry with now?” asked Thuillier.

“With your insolent wife, who has made me a scene; I am trembling all over.”

“Celeste make you a scene!” said Thuillier; “then it is the very first time in her life.”

“There’s a beginning to everything, and if you don’t bring her to order—­”

“But what was it about—­this scene?”

“About madame’s not choosing that la Peyrade should marry her goddaughter; and out of spite, to prevent the marriage, she refused to give anything in the contract.”