"Thanks be to Providence," said I. "I hope I 'll never see one of them again."
"Oh, mamma," said she, "don't say that!"
"And why wouldn't I say it, Mary Anne?" said I. "Would you have me nurse a serpent,—harbor a boa-constrictor in my bosom?"
"But, then, papa," said she, sobbing.
"Let him come up," said I. "Let him see the wreck he has made of me. Let him come and feast his eyes over the ruin his own cruelty has worked."
"Sure he's gone," said she.
"Gone! Who's gone?"
"Papa. He's gone with Mrs. Gore Hampton!"
With that, Molly, I gave a scream that was heard all over the house. And so it was for two hours—screech after screech—tearing my hair and destroying everything within reach of me. To think of the old wretch—for I know his age right well; Sam Davis was at school with him forty-eight years ago, at Dr. Bell's, and that shows he's no chicken—behaving this way. I knew the depravity of the man well enough. I did n't pass twenty years with him without learning the natural wickedness of his disposition, but I never thought he 'd go the length of this. Oh, Molly! the shock nearly killed me; and coming as it did after the dreadful disappointment about Jones M'Carthy's affairs, I don't know at all how I bore up against it. I must tell you that James and Mary Anne did n't see it with my eyes. They thought, or they pretended to think, that he was only going as far as Ems, to accompany her, as they call it, on a visit to the Princess,—just as if there was a princess at all, and that the whole story wasn't lies from beginning to end.
Lord George, too, took their side, and wanted to get angry at my unjust suspicions about Mrs. G., but I just said, what would the world think of me if I went away in a chaise and four with him by way of paying a visit to somebody that never existed? He tried to laugh it off, Molly, and made little of it, but I wouldn't let him, in particular before Mary Anne,—for whatever sins they may lay to my charge, I believe that they can't pretend that I did n't bring up the girls with sound principles of virtue and morality,—and just to convince him of that, I turned to and exposed K. I. to James and the two girls till they were well ashamed of him.