“That was me,” said Moll, “and I’m not going to be abused for just peeping through a keyhole and telling him what I saw behind it. How should I know, in my innocence, that it wasn’t all quite right and proper, and the last thing to make him explode over?”
Her little ladyship seemed to catch her breath over the mere audacity of this self-vindication; and then she answered in volume, though always careful to subdue her voice to the occasion—
“Innocent—you—without heart or conscience! monster of guile and ingratitude! viper on the hearth that has warmed you! Spy and informer that you are, to dare that brazen confession, and in the same breath to pretend to an artless innocence of the fire your vile calumny was intended to blow into a blaze! You innocent! You anything but the shameless wanton your every act proclaims you!”
She paused, panting. “Go on,” said Moll, unruffled. “Get it all out and over.”
“It does not move you,” said Kate. “Why should it?—deaf to every appeal of honour and decency. Shame on your woman’s nature, that can so wrong and vilify one of your own sex, whose only fault has been too great a tolerance of the insult and humiliation imposed upon her by your presence.”
Again she stopped, and Mrs. Moll took up the tale, very pink and cool.
“Gingumbobs!” she said. “If I’m so wicked, aren’t you a little giving away your own innocency? If all was so in order in the great gentleman’s visit, why are you so warm about my peeping and telling of it?”
“Because, by making a secret of it you designedly make it appear the very scandal it was not.”
“I made no secret of it, bless you! Why, I’ll go tell everybody about it this very moment, if you like. There now; ain’t I forgiving?”
“Forgiving!” Poor Kate put back a stray curl from her damp forehead. “You dare to throw the burden of compunction upon me! What have I not to forgive, since the day of your arrival—in this room—now?” Desperately she grasped to recover the moral lead, and to elude the charge to which the other wickedly sought to pin her. “Why are you here, I say?” she went on hurriedly. “What is the meaning of these secret exits and entrances? But no need to ask; your insolence betrays you. Did you meet your lover? Did he slip out from the Queen’s presence just to kiss and dally a wanton moment with the fond, inseparable object of his fancy? Could neither of you wait the hour of reunion in the house you insult and pollute by your presence? Poor, severed, unhappy couple, rent apart by the only brief interval which my lord is forced against his will to devote to duty and decency!”