“Your low, pettifogging ambition never soared above a Softly or a Clare Jones for your daughters, while I was planning alliances that would have placed them among the best in the land—and how have I been rewarded? Indifference, coolness, perhaps contempt!” Here a flood of tears, that had remained dammed up since the last torrent, burst forth in convulsive sobs. “Ungrateful man, who ought never to have forgotten the sacrifice I made in marrying him—the rupture with every member of my family—the severance of every tie that united me to my own.”
She ceased, and here, be it remembered, Mrs. Kennyfeck seemed to address herself to some invisible jury empanelled to try Mr. Kennyfeck on a serious charge.
“He came like a serpent into the bosom of our peaceful circle, and with the arts that his crafty calling but too well supplied, seduced my young affections.”
Mr. Kennyfeck started. It had never before occurred to him that Don Juan was among his range of parts.
“False and unfeeling both,” resumed she. “Luring with promises never intended for performance, you took me from a home, the very sanctuary of peace!”
Mr. Kennyfeck wiped his forehead in perplexity; his recollection of the home in question was different. Sanctuary it might have been, but it was against the officers of the law and the sheriff, and so far as a well-fastened hall door and barricaded windows went, the epithet did not seem quite unsuitable.
“Ah!” sighed she—for it is right to remark that Mrs. Kennyfeck was a mistress of that domestic harmony which consists in every modulation, from the grand adagio of indignant accusation to the rattling andante of open abuse—“had I listened to those older and wiser than I, and who foretold the destiny that awaited me, I had never seen this unhappy day! No, sir! I had not lived to see myself outraged and insulted, and my only sister turned out of the house like a discarded menial.”
Had Mr. Kennyfeck been informed that for courteously making way for a Bencher in the Hall he was stripped of his gown and degraded from his professional rank, he could not have been more thoroughly amazed and thunderstruck.
He actually gasped with excess of astonishment, and, if breath had been left him, would have spoken; but so it was, the very force of the charge stunned him, and he could not utter a word.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kennyfeck, who in the ardor of combat had imitated certain Spanish sailors, who in the enthusiasm of a sea-fight loaded their cannons with whatever came next to hand, was actually shocked by the effect of her own fire. For the grandeur of a peroration she had taken a flying leap over all truth, and would gladly have been safe back again at the other side of the fence.