“Madam,” I said, “you have made it a condition with Mr. Turner that he shall thrust me from his door. Because he rejects this you wish to drive him from the estate. He refuses no longer; I have come to inform you of this. To-morrow you will have rendered your brother’s child homeless.”
“I am glad,” said the woman, haughtily—“very glad that Turner has come to his senses. No one wishes, of course, to send him away; he is a good servant enough; but we cannot make that pretty cottage a nest for impostors. So long as he lives there quietly and alone with his old wife, it does not signify, though I had a fancy for tearing the place down. But he must not harbor objectionable people; give him to understand this before you go. Above all things, strolling gipsies and their children must be kept from the estate. He will understand!”
“Madam, have I your promise that Mr. Turner shall remain in his old place so long as I keep from his house?” I questioned.
“Why, yes,” she answered, smoothing the dog’s ear over her finger; “he is a good old man enough. No one will disturb him, unless my son’s bride should take a distaste to his ugliness when she comes down.”
I received the sidelong glance of her eyes as she said this without flinching, and she went on.
“Estelle has fastidious fancies in such things. Now, I think of it, she may be in want of a clever maid. Did she not approve of your talent in that way, once? If the situation would keep you from want, I have no earthly objection.”
“Madam!” said I, standing upright and speaking, as it were a prophecy, for the words were not formed by a moment’s thought—“madam, when I come back to Greenhurst, I shall be its mistress, not a servant.”
She turned white with rage, and clenched her fingers fiercely among the thick curls of her spaniel, which lay crouched in her lap, eyeing me like a rattlesnake.
As I spoke, a low laugh reached my ear from a window; and, for an instant, I saw the face of Chaleco looking in through the curtains. Lady Clare cowered back in her seat, frightened by the glance that I fixed upon her, by my words and the fiendish glee of that laugh.
“Go,” she said, at last, “leave the estate, you and your old supporter; root and branch you shall all be exterminated.”