“She’s a heartless hypocrite—a canting bigot,” said Lady Selina, when she joined Arabella in the boudoir. “She’s going to frighten the little remaining life out of our suffering darling by her terrible warnings and denunciations!”
“I would not let her enter the room,” exclaimed Arabella, almost fiercely.
“My love, she’s the mistress here—the absolute mistress. Mrs. Effingham takes particular care that we should all be made fully aware of that fact. We have no power to protect your poor sister against her fanatical cruelty, for so I must call it; and the end is to crown the beginning. Little has our Louisa had for which to thank her step-mother—hypocritical smiles, plenty of soft words, but not a single act of real kindness.”
“Mrs. Effingham sat up with her all last night,” observed Arabella, with perhaps a latent sense of justice.
“A sop to her conscience!” exclaimed Lady Selina indignantly; “a heathen, a savage could have done no less after yesterday’s horrible neglect. To send her home dripping and dying—it makes me shudder to think of it. After such treatment of the dear girl, no one on earth would ever persuade me that Mrs. Effingham possesses a heart.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE EFFECT OF A WORD.
“Why were two doctors sent for? Did they say I am ill, very ill?” exclaimed Louisa with feverish excitement, fixing her hollow eyes anxiously upon the face of her step-mother.
“Lady Selina wished to try every means to make you quite well, dear one,” replied Clemence quietly, “and thought it best, therefore, to ask the advice of an additional physician.”