Had Marion herself been a ruined gamester or a spendthrift, she could scarcely have felt more guilty and ashamed than now; but after standing an entire minute without being observed, and perceiving Mrs. Penfold unable to speak, from the effort it cost to restrain her anger within decent bounds, Marion, with the frankness natural to her candid disposition, came at once to the point, saying, with heightened color, and scarcely articulate voice, while her beautiful deep intelligent eyes were fixed with an earnest gaze on Mrs. Penfold.
"I fear no satisfactory answer has come this term from my brother?"
"No! nor there never will be!" thundered Mrs. Penfold, in a voice that made the gentle Marion absolutely cower before her. "There, Miss Dunbar! look at that bill!" added she, flinging it furiously into the lap of Marion, who had sunk upon a seat. "How much will a shilling in the pound be for that? Four hundred guineas absolutely lost—wasted—squandered upon you!"
Unable to speak from consternation, though such scenes were already but too familiar to her memory, Marion fixed her eyes on the unwelcome bill, apparently examining its contents, while her thoughts were in the mean time painfully occupied in devising what would be right for her to say or do in this unexpected crisis. A long pause ensued, during which Mrs. Penfold seemed resolute not to speak; therefore Marion, with a strenuous effort, endeavored to new-string her nerves, and say something, while the large heavy tears forced themselves into her eyes.
"Mrs. Penfold," replied she earnestly, "you know how ready I would be to send my brother another letter of remonstrance, if that could be of any avail, but now he never so much as answers me. I seem indeed to be quite forgotten by both Patrick and Agnes!"
Marion paused to recover her voice, and to choke back her tears, after which she continued in a firmer tone, while Mrs. Penfold listened, with a dry, harsh, unmoved expression of countenance.
"You are justly dissatisfied about my brother's payment, but if there be the least cause to doubt your being ultimately remunerated, send me immediately home. I dare not go of myself, but you have power to dismiss me, and let it be done. The sorrow and mortification must all be mine, but whatever falls on myself alone, I shall always be able to bear."
"Miss Dunbar! you have anticipated exactly what I am obliged to do, and what it would have been well for me if I had done sooner!" replied Mrs. Penfold, angrily flouncing into a chair, and pirouetting it almost round, so as to look Marion full in the face. "I am sorry for you certainly, because, though your music is not yet exactly such as to do me much credit, and your Italian is sometimes far from grammatical, yet on the whole there cannot be a better-disposed girl, nor one who has testified a more constant desire to please me."
Marion's heart was melted by even this very slight expression of regard, and nothing could exceed the troubled beauty of her eyes, when she raised them gratefully to Mrs. Penfold, but conscious that her presence was not exactly the place for a scene, as that lady had long been considered incapable of a tear or a smile, she averted her face, and struggled for composure.
"I have learned for the first time to-day." resumed Mrs. Penfold, her voice becoming more stern as she proceeded, "that before your father's death, Sir Patrick twice, in the most profligate manner, paid off his creditors with a shilling in the pound! In consequence of great losses now at the Doncaster races, and having paid what he calls his debts of honor to a ruinous amount, Sir Patrick has yesterday fled to the sanctuary at Holyrood House for refuge, and the creditors have already seized everything. No wonder indeed! it was full time! He is all promise and no performance,—for ever feeding us with empty spoons!"