Acton Manor was in Mr. Hastings’ neighbourhood, and Mervyn struck his own knee several times.
‘Hum! ha! Was not some chaff going on one day about the heiresses boxed up in the west wing? Some one set you all down at a monstrous figure—a hundred thousand apiece. I wonder if he were green enough to believe it! Hastings! No, it can’t be! Here, we’ll have the impudent child down, and frighten it out of her. But first, how are we to put off that fellow Fenton? Make up something to tell him.’
‘Making up would be of no use,’ said Phœbe; ‘he is too clever. Tell him it is a family matter.’
Mervyn left the room, and Phœbe hid her face in her hands, thunderstruck, and endeavouring to disentangle her thoughts,
perturbed between shame, indignation, and the longing to shield and protect her sister. She had not fully realized her sister’s offence, so new to her imagination, when she was roused by Mervyn’s return, saying that he had sent for Bertha to have it over.
Starting up, she begged to go and prepare her sister, but he peremptorily detained her, and, ‘Oh, be kind to her,’ was all that she could say, before in tripped Bertha, looking restless and amazed, but her retroussé nose, round features, and wavy hair so childish that the accusation seemed absurd.
So Mervyn felt it, and in vain drew in his feet, made himself upright, and tried to look magisterial. ‘Bertha,’ he began, ‘Bertha, I have sent for you, Bertha—it is not possible—What’s that?’ pointing to the letter, as though it had been a stain of ink which she had just perpetrated.
Alarmed perhaps, but certainly not confounded, Bertha put her hands before her, and demurely said—‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you mean, Bertha, by such a correspondence as this?’
‘If you know that letter is for me, why did you meddle with it?’ she coolly answered.