She began to cry again, dropped her little cloak, and running back to Julie threw her arms round her neck and sobbed bitterly.
"Be quiet, Frances dear," Julie whispered to her. "We will go away to your father. You can ask him; he will tell you all that I can't tell you here. Come, be a good child--be my brave, sensible little Frances--"
"I must confess that this is the most extraordinary proceeding I ever heard of," said the countess, in a loud but perfectly indifferent voice. "Such language from such a mouth--_une femme entretenue qui ne rougit pas de vouloir enlever un enfant à la mère légitime_--"
"Countess," interrupted Julie, likewise raising her voice, "you said that in French; that relieves me from the disagreeable necessity of giving you the plain German answer that such an insult deserves--an insult which you yourself know to be false. Besides, I haven't to do with you, although you have permitted your rooms to be the theatre of this intrigue. I merely have to reply to the mother that I have a right to this child, a right that was voluntarily given me by its father, and that I certainly regret having to make use of this right in opposition to one who might have appealed to a holy right of Nature, had she not of her own accord relinquished it. You wished to steal the child from the father, and I, the betrothed of your former husband, fulfill only my motherly duty when I resist such a robbery. Get ready, Frances; we have nothing more to do here."
The face of the young woman had grown deadly pale, her soft eyes flashed fire, and she ground her little white teeth so that the sound was plainly audible.
"You allow yourself," she said, "to judge of circumstances you do not understand, that have never been told you except in a one-sided and distorted way. I have never renounced my natural right to call this child mine; I have merely been obliged to yield for a time to force, and I have always secretly hoped that time would come to my aid, that the father of my darling would acknowledge the deep wrong he had done me, and that the separation would tend to soften him. And who knows that this would not have come about had you not stepped in between us? Now, to be sure, that things have gone so far, there is no longer any hope of settling the matter amicably. If I would have back what belongs to me by sacred rights I was obliged to steal it as if it had been the property of another; and how hard it will be for me to make it mine again I have already discovered to my sorrow, for they have estranged the heart of this poor, motherless creature from its most natural home. Nevertheless, I will not cease to proclaim my right to the child and to its father. Why do you stand in the way of a deeply-injured woman, a robbed mother? Don't pretend you really care anything about becoming my successor to the child, as you have become to the father. Skillfully as you now play the _rôle_ of the tender mother, in your heart you will be grateful to me if I relieve you of this burdensome duty; and he too, the most fickle of men--believe me, if he only had a reasonable pretext before the world, he would console himself in your possession, and would rejoice that I had been so good-natured as to have removed from his sight, without his express consent, the remembrance of an old guilt!"