Lydia Pounce and her mistress had gone through, together, so many emotions, intrigues, quarrels, reconciliations, triumphs, and despairs that it was scarcely too much to say they had become indispensable to each other. Therefore, too, both had grown to read each other’s countenances with the utmost facility. Now, Lydia was pale and pinched; her knobby little hands were clasping each other fiercely across her neat waistband; she was visibly trembling. Lady Kilcroney knew these symptoms.
“What is to do, Lydia?”
“Ho, my Lady!”
The Abigail here clutched at her heart and turned up her eyes.
“Dear me, Lydia,” said her Ladyship, tartly, “have they ventured to laugh again in the pantry as you happened to be passing, or has anyone broken into the safe and stolen my diamonds?”
“Ho, your Ladyship, you may well ask. Heaven knows I’m prepared from this out to be the laughing-stock of this house. Everyone may point the finger of scorn at me. The name of Pounce is for ever blasted! As for thieves, my Lady, there are worse thieves than will ever be hanged walking about this moment, and treasures stolen of value far above diamonds!”
“Dear me!”
“Her Ladyship wouldn’t be so easy with her ‘dear me’s’ if she knew what’s happened. ’Tis gospel truth, my Lady, and I’m telling no falsehood, that the thought of having to inform your Ladyship is the bitterest part of the sorrow that has come upon me this day!”
Kitty Kilcroney put down her book. Seeing that her maid’s eyes were genuinely tear-stained, and that the convulsive shiverings were not all assumed, she began to feel concern.
“Dear me!” she said again, in quite another tone. “I trust nothing has happened to your family—your good brother, or any of the children?”