Kate looked at her, but said nothing.
‘You needn’t suppose,’ resumed Mrs. Wititterly, ‘that your looking at me in that way, Miss Nickleby, will prevent my saying what I am going to say, which I feel to be a religious duty. You needn’t direct your glances towards me,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with a sudden burst of spite; ‘I am not Sir Mulberry, no, nor Lord Frederick Verisopht, Miss Nickleby, nor am I Mr Pyke, nor Mr. Pluck either.’
Kate looked at her again, but less steadily than before; and resting her elbow on the table, covered her eyes with her hand.
‘If such things had been done when I was a young girl,’ said Mrs Wititterly (this, by the way, must have been some little time before), ‘I don’t suppose anybody would have believed it.’
‘I don’t think they would,’ murmured Kate. ‘I do not think anybody would believe, without actually knowing it, what I seem doomed to undergo!’
‘Don’t talk to me of being doomed to undergo, Miss Nickleby, if you please,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with a shrillness of tone quite surprising in so great an invalid. ‘I will not be answered, Miss Nickleby. I am not accustomed to be answered, nor will I permit it for an instant. Do you hear?’ she added, waiting with some apparent inconsistency for an answer.
‘I do hear you, ma’am,’ replied Kate, ‘with surprise—with greater surprise than I can express.’
‘I have always considered you a particularly well-behaved young person for your station in life,’ said Mrs. Wititterly; ‘and as you are a person of healthy appearance, and neat in your dress and so forth, I have taken an interest in you, as I do still, considering that I owe a sort of duty to that respectable old female, your mother. For these reasons, Miss Nickleby, I must tell you once for all, and begging you to mind what I say, that I must insist upon your immediately altering your very forward behaviour to the gentlemen who visit at this house. It really is not becoming,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, closing her chaste eyes as she spoke; ‘it is improper—quite improper.’
‘Oh!’ cried Kate, looking upwards and clasping her hands; ‘is not this, is not this, too cruel, too hard to bear! Is it not enough that I should have suffered as I have, night and day; that I should almost have sunk in my own estimation from very shame of having been brought into contact with such people; but must I also be exposed to this unjust and most unfounded charge!’
‘You will have the goodness to recollect, Miss Nickleby,’ said Mrs Wititterly, ‘that when you use such terms as “unjust”, and “unfounded”, you charge me, in effect, with stating that which is untrue.’