“Good Lord!” cried Jocelyn. He cast the hat he had been clasping under his arm into the middle of the room, the better to clutch his temples. “Am I stark, staring mad? What monstrous stroke is this, what plot, what inconceivable mistake?”
There was such a ring of truth in his accents that my Lady shot a doubting glance at Pamela, but conviction returned upon her as she saw this young woman bending over the child so as to hide her face, and shaken with hysterical emotion.
Kitty drew a long breath, and started again.
“Do not think, nephew, that by adding deceit to your vileness, you can make a better situation for yourself. Far from it. I have not sent for you here to-day to rebuke or even to reproach. My sole desire is to help you both. Heaven forbid that I should be hard on any woman who has been betrayed by her own heart!
“Pamela, if you had confided in me ere this—nay, never mind now! Suffice it that I know all. As for you, sir, I am well aware that gentlemen think all too lightly of a woman’s virtue; that if their fancy leads them to court in a lower class than their own, the most hitherto virtuous and confiding female becomes, to use their own horrid words, fair game.
“But I’ll not have Pamela Pounce treated so! She’s far too good for you, sir, and so I tell you straight. And the proposal which I am about to make to you is for her sake, and not for yours. You shall marry this good young woman—good but for you, you scamp!—and I shall make it my business to place you in an advantageous position out of England. I’ll pay your debts again, sir, and set you up. I have not thought where yet, but it shall not be India, for the little angel’s sake——”
Here she stopped suddenly. Her eye strayed to the child, and she saw, to her utter amazement, that the young milliner was laughing, not weeping.
“Pamela Pounce!” she cried, in a scandalized voice.
Pamela got up and set the child on the floor.
“Will your Ladyship observe the little one? She is small for her age, I know, nevertheless it is plain to see she is over two years. How old are you, Carmelita? Tell the lady.”