“What do you mean?” she whispered.
I looked searchingly into her eyes.
“No,” I said, reassured; “there are the same unborn babies there. But who, then, was that brute you ran from?”
She put her arms round my neck.
“He—he is a groom of madam’s, and high in favour with her because a good Catholic. She bids me listen to him; and—and I don’t know what she means, Diana, or what he means. He is a coarse and violent man—sometimes. But she forces me into his company, and to see the town together. And O, Diana! I am almost sure he drinks too much.”
I burst into a laugh.
“You should be whipped for the slander, child. But I suspect the truth. We don’t run but from those we have a partiality for. Watch Moll and Meg at dragging-time in the fairs.”
She cried “Diana!” and, looking up horrified into my face, read its mockery, and, gasping out, “I am very unhappy,” fell away from me.
“You poor little creature!” I cried, fiercely moved by her distress; “if you don’t know what madam means, I do. ’Tis the way with the quality to pension off their discarded fancies on Jack or Molly.”
She showed by her manner that she did not understand me, but my indignation would not let me explain. Moreover, I was too satisfied with my own solution to wish it contradicted.