"What!" cried she, "you love Lord Verney?"
"'Tis the only man of them," sobbed Kitty, "who does not pester me with his devotion—the only one who does not come to my call like a lap-dog. If I look at him he blushes for bashfulness, and not for love; if his hand shakes it is because he is so sweetly timid, not because my touch thrills him. I had set my heart," said Mistress Kitty through her clenched teeth—"I had set my heart upon Lord Verney, and now you must needs have him ki—ki—killed before I have even had time to make him see the colour of my eyes."
"Oh, oh!" sighed Julia Standish, still beyond tears.
And:
"Oh!" sobbed Kitty Bellairs, quite forgetful of red noses and swollen lids.
There was a silence broken only by the sobs of the widow and the sighs of the wife.
Then said Mistress Kitty, in a small, strangled voice: "Let this be a lesson to you never to deceive."
"I never told a single lie before," moaned Lady Standish.
"Ah!" said Kitty, "there never was a single lie, madam. A lie is wed as soon as born, and its progeny exceeds that of Abraham."
The two women rose from their despairing postures, and, mutually pushed by the same impulse, approached each other.