Nothing will induce me."
"Upon my word, Henriette, you are too aggravating and impossible. To
think that now at the eleventh hour you should fail me and break down.
Are you going to spoil everything! Let me take little Ralph;" and I
put out my arms for the child, which Victorine held.
But the mother stood between us, seized the baby convulsively, and
with a gesture of repulsion cried:
"Go away, go away, you shall not have him. I don't care what happens,
I will keep him against all the world."
I pleaded and stormed in turn, I tried everything but force, all
without avail. My foolish sister seemed to have taken leave of her
senses; she thought nothing of the nearly certain collapse of our
schemes, her one overmastering idea was, like any tigress, to resist
all attempts to deprive her of her cub.
Meanwhile the time ran on. Already the officials were crying "_En
voiture_," and I knew my train was timed to leave at five minutes past
8 A.M. If I lingered I should lose it, no great matter perhaps, seeing
that the exchange, my principal object, had not been made; but if I
remained with Henriette, she with her baby and I with mine, the whole
of the artifice might at any moment be laid bare.
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