“Where did you go to, miss, when you left this house? Straight, now! What? You went and sat under the trees in the park? Upon my word, I never! And how long might you have been a-sitting there? You don’t know. Better and better. You went to sleep, miss, with that there bag full of gold. Oh, you——”
Pamela drooped her head, receiving the indictment as with the humility of a guilty conscience, though she was considerably relieved by the solution which the older Miss Pounce had found for herself.
Suddenly Lydia bounced out of her seat.
“Mercy on us, here’s my Lady!” cried she. And then, with a scream: “Mercy on us!” she cried again. “What in the world has happened?”
Pamela stared. My Lady Kilcroney it was indeed, to judge by a fine feathered hat and a delicate flutter of muslins, but a vastly different Lady Kilcroney from the charming, happy little lady of Pamela’s remembrance. A small figure with a stricken face crawled into the room, and, as Lydia rushed forward, nearly swooned against her.
“My Lady, my Lady, what is it?” cried the maid in genuine concern, guiding her mistress’s form to the chair she had herself but just vacated.
“Oh, oh, oh!” moaned my Lady. “Oh, in the name of Heaven, send for my Lord? Oh, Lydia, the letter, the letter!”
Both women then saw that in a little gloved hand my Lady Kilcroney was clutching an open sheet. Lydia took it into her own grasp and glanced at it.
“Mercy on us!” then cried she for the third time. “That dratted young man you’ve been so good to! Well, if ever was anything so ungrateful! To go and put an end to himself, just to spite you! Never you take on, my Lady, he’s no great loss, I protest. A good riddance, say I.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” Kitty Kilcroney sat up and wrung her hands. “Was ever any woman so punished for a fit of temper? Oh, Lydia! Oh! I shall never smile again! ’Twas my Lord being so late in yestereven from White’s, mad-stupid with his losses. And, oh, the night I had, trying to show him the error of his ways and the vast folly of not letting bad be when the luck’s against him. And him going off in a huff, God knows where, before I’d as much as swallowed my chocolate! And Mrs. Mirabel’s hat coming on the top of it, and it is a sight to frighten the crows after all my trouble. And my gown for Her Majesty’s birthday the wrong yellow, and no time to get another! And for the wretched boy to come to me then, with his horrid tale of the dice and the cards, as bad as my Lord’s own, him without a farthing but my bounty! Oh, oh, ’twas true I insulted him! What’s that you say? Who are you, pray?”