The immediate weight, too, of Marie's misery was aggravated by the fact that in order to catch the train for Basle at Colmar, her uncle need not start quite immediately.

There was an hour during which he could continue to exercise his eloquence upon his niece, and endeavour to induce her to authorise him to contradict her own letter.

He appealed first to her affection, and then to her duty; and after that, having failed in these appeals, he poured forth the full vials of his wrath upon her head.

She was ungrateful, obstinate, false, unwomanly, disobedient, irreligious, sacrilegious, and an idiot.

In the fury of his anger, there was hardly any epithet of severe rebuke which he spared, and yet, as every cruel word left his mouth, he assured her that it should all be taken to mean nothing, if she would only now tell him that he might nullify the letter.