Mistress Megrim gazed upon her coldly and her old-maid's heart hardened within her.
"No, your ladyship," said she, with a virtuous sniff, "I shouldn't feel as I was doing my duty to her ladyship, your mother, nor to my humble self, were I to remain an hour longer than I could help, the Handmaid of Sin."
"Oh, dear," said Lady Standish, letting herself fall back on her pillows with a weary moan, "I do wish you'd hold your tongue, woman, and allow me to rest! Pull the curtain again; oh, how my head aches!"
"Very well, my lady," ejaculated Megrim, all at once in a towering passion. "Since you're that hardened, my lady, that a sign from Heaven couldn't melt your heart—I allude to that man of God, his lordship the Bishop (oh, what a holy gentleman that is!); and, my lady, me and Mistress Tremlet saw him out of the pantry window as he shook the dust of this House of Iniquity from his shoes; if that vessel of righteousness could not prevail with your ladyship, what hopes have I that you'll hear the voice of the Lord through me?"
"Megrim, hold your tongue," said her mistress in unwontedly angered tones, "pull the curtains and go away!"
With a hand that trembled with fury Mistress Megrim fell upon the curtains and rattled them along their pole. Then she groped her way to Lady Standish's bedside and stood for some seconds peering malevolently at her through the darkness.
"I wouldn't believe it, my lady," she hissed in a ghastly whisper, "although indeed I might have known that such a gentleman as Sir Jasper would never have taken on like that if he hadn't had grounds. But you've mistaken your woman, when you think you can make an improper go-between of me! Oh," cried she, with a rigid shudder, "I feel myself defiled as with pitch, that these fingers should actually have touched sich a letter!"
"For goodness sake," moaned the lady from her pillows, "what are you talking about now?"
"My lady," said Megrim sepulchrally, "when that minx with her face muffled up in a hood, came and had the brazen boldness to ask for me this morning, saying she had some lace of your ladyship's from the mender's, and that it was most particular and must be given into my hands alone, my mind misgave me. 'Twas like an angel's warning. The more so as there isn't a scrap of your ladyship's lace as has been to the mender's since we came here."
"Mercy, Megrim, how you do ramble on! I can't make head or tail of your stupid story." Even a dove will peck.