K. I. has what he calls his dressing-room—it's little trouble dressing gives him—at the end of this; but I was n't attending to that, but sitting with a heavy heart under a dwarf fig-tree, like Nebuchadnezzar, and only full of my own misfortunes, when I heard through the trees the rustling sound of a woman's dress. I bent down my head to see, and there was Mrs. G. in a white muslin dressing-gown, but elegantly trimmed with Malines lace, two falls round the cape, and the same on the arm, just as becoming a thing as any she could put on.
"What's this for?" said I to myself; for you may guess I knew she did n't dress that way to pluck lemons and green limes; and so I sat watching her in silence. She stood, evidently listening, for a minute or two; she then gathered two or three flowers, and stuck them in her waist, and, after that, she hummed a few bars of a tune, quite low, and as if to herself. That was, I suppose, a signal, for K. I.'s door opened; and there he stood himself, and a nice-looking article he was, with his ragged robe de chambre, and his greasy skull-cap, bowing and scraping like an old monkey. "I little knew that such a flower was blooming in the conservatory," said he, with a smirk I suppose he thought quite captivating.
"You do not pretend that you selected your apartment here but in the hope of watching the unfolding buds," replied she; and then, with something in a lower voice, to which he answered in the same, she passed on into his room, and he closed the door after her.
I suppose I must have fainted, Molly, after that. I remembered nothing, except seeing lemon and orange trees all sliding and flitting about, and felt myself as if I was shooting down the Rhine on a raft. Maybe it's for worse that I 'm reserved. Maybe it would have been well for me if I was carried away out of this world of woe, wickedness, and artful widows. When I came to myself, I suddenly recalled everything; and it was as much as I could do not to scream out and bring all the house to the spot and expose them both. But I subdued my indigent feelings, and, creeping over to the door, I peeped at them through the keyhole.
K. I. was seated in his big chair, she in another close beside him. He was reading a letter, and she watching him, as if her life depended on him.
"Now read this," said she, thrusting another paper into his hand, "for you 'll see it is even worse."
"My heart bleeds for you, my dear Mrs. Gore," said he, taking off his spectacles and wiping his eyes, and red enough they were afterwards, for there was snuff on his handkerchief,—"my heart bleeds for you!"
These were his words; and why I didn't break open the door when I heard them, is more than I can tell.