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The sweeper’s wife grew dark red. Notwithstanding, she could not keep from smiling inwardly: hadn’t everything turned out exactly as she knew it would! But now there was going to be an end to it. Wrath and Pride rose up within her, till they swelled and glowed from her cheeks and eyes, which sent out sparks; and who knows—while she stood there silent and unseen, regarding the two young people, who had neither eyes nor ears for anything but each other—who knows if Envy and Lust, too, did not covertly slink forth from their retreat and play each on its own hidden string within her soul?

She did not reflect long, but stepped hastily forward to the bed, seized the girl’s slender wrist in an iron grasp, gave her a disgraceful epithet, and flung her out of the door with a stream of the foulest abuse. Afterwards, in the interested presence of the servants and prentices, she swore a solemn and luscious oath that if the young girl ever again dared to set foot within her threshold, she should get her skin full of so many blows that she would not be able to stir a fin for fourteen days.