“Lies will not serve you, false girl. Come here this instant! I know that you have been shamelessly receiving my son here, night after night.”
“I never knew!”
“Missie Madam never knew,” chimed in Jumbo. “All in the dark. She thought it old mas’r.”
Lady Belamour looked contemptuously incredulous; but the negro’s advocacy gave a kind of courage to Aurelia, and availing herself of a slight relaxation of the fingers she withdrew her hand, and coming forward, said, “Indeed, madam, I know nothing, I was entirely deceived. Only hearing two voices in the dark alarmed me, so that I listened to my sister, and struck a light to discover the truth. Then all caught fire, and blazed up, and—”
“Then you are an incendiary as well as a traitor,” said her Ladyship, with cold, triumphant malignity. “This is work for the constable. Here, Loveday,” to her own woman, who was waiting in the outer room, “take this person away, and lock her into her own room till morning, when we can give her up to justice.”
“Oh, my Lady,” cried Aurelia, crouching at her feet and clinging to her dress, “do not be so cruel! Oh! let me go home to my father!”
“Madam!” cried a voice from the bed, “let alone my wife! Come, Aurelia. Oh!”
Then starting up in bed had wrenched his broken arm, and he fell back senseless again, just as Aurelia would have flown back to him, but his mother stood between, spurning her away.
Another defender, if she could so be called, spoke for her. “It is true, please your Ladyship,” said Mrs. Aylward, “that Mr. Belamour called her the wife of this poor young gentleman.”
Jumbo too exclaimed, “No one knew but Jumbo; His Honour marry pretty missie in mas’r’s wig and crimson dressing-gown.”