This last and cruelest taunt, which she had brought out against her better feelings, seemed to have relieved her soul of a hundred-weight of care; she drew a deep breath, and turning to Philippus, went on far more quietly and rationally: 

“As for you, Philip, my husband needs you.  You know well what we have offered you and you know George’s liberal hand.  Perhaps you will think better of it, and will learn to perceive. . .”

“I! . . .” said the leech with a lofty smile.  “Do you really know me so little?  Your husband, I am ready to admit, stands high in my esteem, and when he wants me he will no doubt send for me.  But never again will I cross this threshold uninvited, or enter a house where right is trodden underfoot, where defenceless innocence is insulted and abandoned to despair.

“You may stare in astonishment!  Your son has desecrated his father’s judgment-seat, and the blood of guiltless Hiram is on his head.—­You—­well, you may still cling to your emeralds.  Paula will not touch them; she is too high-souled to tell you who it is that you would indeed do well to lock up in the deepest dungeon-cell!  What I have heard from your lips breaks every tie that time had knit between us.  I do not demand that my friends should be wealthy, that they should have any attractions or charm, any special gifts of mind or body; but we must meet on common ground:  that of honorable feeling.  That you did not bring into the world, or you have lost it; and from this hour I am a stranger to you and never wish to see you again, excepting by the side of your husband when he requires me.”

He spoke the last words with such immeasurable dignity that Neforis was startled and bereft of all self-control.  She had been treated as a wretch worthy of utter scorn by a man beneath her in rank, but whom she always regarded as one of the most honest, frank and pure-minded she had ever known; a man indispensable to her husband, because he knew how to mitigate his sufferings, and could restrain him from the abuse of his narcotic anodyne.  He was the only physician of repute, far and wide.  She was to be deprived of the services of this valuable ally, to whom little Mary and many of the household owed their lives, by this Syrian girl; and she herself, sure that she was a good and capable wife and mother, was to stand there like a thing despised and avoided by every honest man, through this evil genius of her house!

It was too much.  Tortured by rage, vexation, and sincere distress, she said in a complaining voice, while the tears started to her eyes: 

“But what is the meaning of all this?  You, who know me, who have seen me ruling and caring for my family, you turn your back upon me in my own house and point the finger at me?  Have I not always been a faithful wife, nursing my husband for years and never leaving his sick-bed, never thinking of anything but how to ease his pain?  I have lived like a recluse from sheer sense of duty and faithful