“Not she—a married woman,” she protested cunningly.
“She was not married before she married Lord Skene,” I said. “I was born to her out of wedlock, and he was not allowed to know it.”
Again she was silent, panting a little; and suddenly she was seized with a second paroxysm of coughing.
“O dear! O dear!” she gasped, when she could speak. “O, the deuce and all! O, my lungs are like emery paper, and the joints of my bones gone scroopy. O, get me a chair, ducky, get me a chair! I’m all wore out with pain, I am, and I sha’n’t trouble anyone much longer. There, I shall be better in a minute—I can feel it passing. O the deuce and the devil!”
I helped her to seat herself, and stood over her while she recovered. When she did at length, she went on ejaculating, “O, the deuce and the devil!” in spasmodic whispers, until her speech found breath for further irrelevancies:
“Welcome to live as she likes for me O, the deuce and all!—in her fine castle, my pretty—so long as I’m left undisturbed in my little ’ouse—in my little O the devil ducky!”
I waited for the stream to run out, and then spoke again.
“Lord Skene was not allowed to know it, I say.”
She answered me, without looking up.
“I was no party to that, my dovey the deuce. I swear I wasn’t O, the devil! It was all Pugsley’s doing, the deuce and the devil take him!”