‘That meddling with papers was very bad,’ she said, with an extenuating smile.
‘Fun is a perfect demon when it becomes master,’ said Sophy. It was plain that it was not Maurice that she was thinking of, but the caricature. Her sister should have been sacred from derision.
‘We must remember,’ she said, ‘that it was only through Maurice’s meddling that we became aware of the existence of this precious work. It is not as if he had shown it to any one.
‘How many of the O’Mores have made game of it?’ asked Sophy, bitterly. ‘No, I am glad I know of it, I shall not be deceived any more.’
With these words she withdrew, evidently resolved to put an end to the subject. Her face was like iron, and Albinia grieved for the deep resentment that the man whom she had ventured to think of as devoted to herself, had made game of her sister. Poor Sophy, to her that tryste had been a subject of unmitigated affliction and shame, and it was a cruel wound that Ulick O’More should, of all men, have turned it into ridicule. What would be the effect on her?
In process of time Mr. Kendal returned. ‘Albinia,’ he said, ‘this is a most unfortunate affair. He is perfectly impracticable, insists on starting for Paris to-morrow, and I verily believe he will.’
‘Poor Lucy.’
‘She is in such distress, that I could not bear to look at her, but he will not attend to her, nor to his uncle and aunt. Mrs. Dusautoy proposed that they should come to the vicarage, where there would be no danger of collisions with Maurice; but his mind can admit no idea but that he has been insulted, and that we encourage it, and he thinks his dignity concerned in resenting it.’
‘Not much dignity in being driven off the field by a child of six years old.’
‘So his aunt told him, but he mixes it up with O’More, and insists on my complaining to Mr. Goldsmith, and getting the lad dismissed for a libellous caricaturist, as he calls it. Now, little as I should have expected such conduct from O’More, it could not be made a ground of complaint to his uncle.’