“Is the creature mad, or a sibyl?” said Lady Catherine, in a voice that went through and through me.
“Mother,” said her son, pale as death, but with a strange glory of expression in his face—“need you ask again whose blood spoke there?”
He addressed her in a whisper, but she turned white, and lifted her finger to check his further speech, glancing at Estelle.
“Strange language this for the daughter of a servant!” exclaimed Estelle, her bosom heaving with scornful astonishment.
“I am not the daughter of a servant,” was the reply that sprang to my lips; “the story is a falsehood. Turner is my benefactor, my more than father: not my father; but if he were, why should my words, if right, not spring from the lips of his child? Are all gifts reserved for the patrician? Does not the great oak and the valley lily spring from exactly the same soil? Thank heaven there is no monopoly in thought!”
“In heaven’s name, who taught you these things?” cried Lady Catherine, aghast.
“Who teaches the flowers to grow, and the fruit to ripen?” I answered, almost weeping, for my words sprang from an impulse, subtle and evanescent as the perfume of a flower; and like all sensitive persons I shrunk from the remembrance of my own mental impetuosity.
“Really, your ladyship, you must excuse me, this is getting tiresome,” said Estelle, sweeping from the room; “I fear with all your goodness the child will prove a troublesome pet.”
Lady Catherine sat among her cushions very white, and with a glitter in her eyes that I had learned to shrink from.
“Irving,” she said, speaking to him in a low but firm voice, “plead with me no more—she must and shall leave the estate.”