She breaks off, as if quite overcome, and unable to go on.
‘I can tell you this, at all events,’ says Crosby, ‘that she does not live alone. Wyndham has engaged a lady to be a companion to her.’
‘Paul!’ Mrs. Prior turns her eyes, moist with her late emotion, on him—eyes now full of wrath. ‘Is she an imbecile, then, this girl? Must Paul engage a keeper for her? What absurd throwing of dust in the eyes of the world!’
‘A companion, I said.’
She throws him a little contemptuous glance, and, with agitation, begins to pace up and down the room. ‘A nice companion! They are well met, no doubt,’ cries she suddenly, ‘this “companion” and her charge. I tell you, George, I shall get at the root of this.’
‘I don’t think you will have to go very deep,’ says Crosby.
‘You think it is so much on the surface as that? I don’t. And I shall take measures; I shall know what to do.’
There is something so determined in her air as she says this, that Crosby looks at her with some consideration. What is she going to do?
But she is looking down upon the carpet, and is evidently thinking. Yes, she knows what she will do. She will go to that girl to-morrow, and tell her plainly what her position is. She will so speak and so argue, that if the girl is, as George Crosby pretends to suppose, a virtuous girl, she will frighten her out of her present position. And if she is what Mrs. Prior, with horrible hope, determines she is, well, then, no harm will be done, but the ‘little establishment,’ as she calls it, will infallibly be broken up. There is another thought, however. Crosby just now had spoken almost tenderly of Josephine. If there is the smallest chance of Crosby’s being attracted by her, Mrs. Prior feels that she could stay proceedings with regard to Paul with a most willing hand. If not? Any way, there is a whole evening to think it over.
‘What do you think of doing?’ asks Crosby at this moment, a little anxiously. To attack Wyndham before them all, downstairs?... That would be abominable! And yet he would hardly put it beyond her.