Madame Patoff bent her head and hid her eyes in her hand, as though greatly distressed.
"I love you so much, dear Hermy--I cannot bear to think of your marrying him. You cannot understand me--I know--and you think me very unkind. But I hate him!" she cried, with a burst of uncontrollable anger. "Oh, how I hate him!"
Her hands had dropped from her face, and her dark eyes flashed wickedly as she stared at the young girl. Hermione was startled for a moment, but she also had learned a lesson of self-possession.
"Do you think that I am afraid when you look at me like that, aunt Annie?" she asked, very quietly.
Madame Patoff's features relaxed, and she laughed a little foolishly, as though ashamed of herself.
"No, child; why should you be afraid? I am only an unhappy old woman. I cannot speak to any one else."
"And you must not speak to me in that way," answered Hermione, in a gentle tone. "I love Paul with all my heart, and I cannot hear him abused by you, even though I know you are out of your mind when you say such things. I should be despicable if I listened to you."
"If I loved you less, dear," returned the old lady, "I might hate him less. Ah, if you could only have married Alexis,--if it could only have been the other way!"
"Hush!" exclaimed Hermione, almost roughly. "You are wishing that Paul were dead, instead of his brother. I will go away, if you talk like that."
She suited the action to the word, and rose to go towards the door. She knew her aunt very well. Madame Patoff changed her tone at once.
"Oh, don't go away, don't go away!" she cried nervously. "I will never speak of him again, if you will only stay with me."
Hermione turned and came back, and saw that her threat had for the present produced its effect, as it usually did. Madame Patoff had indeed a strange affection for her niece, and the latter knew how to manage her by means of it. At the mere idea of Hermione's leaving her in anger, the aunt softened and became docile.
"I did not mean it, child," she said, dolefully. "I am always so unhappy, so dreadfully wretched, that I say things I do not altogether mean. I am not quite myself to-night, either. Coming here, to the place where my poor boy was lost, has upset my nerves; and, really, your aunt Chrysophrasia is so very tactless. She always was like that. I remember the way in which she treated my poor husband before we were married. It was she who made all the quarrel, you know. It broke up my life at the very beginning, and we two sisters never saw each other again. I do not know what would have become of me if my husband had not loved me as he did. He was so kind to me, always, and he sympathized in all my feelings and ideas. If he had only lived, how different it might all have been!"