Charlotte sat up with a dangerous look about her jaw. She could hardly believe that Lambert could have babbled her secrets to this despised creature in order to save himself. “He appears to tell you a good deal about his business affairs,” she said, her eyes quelling the feeble resistance in Mrs. Lambert’s; “but he doesn’t seem to tell you the truth about other matters. He’s telling ye lies about what takes him to Tally Ho; it isn’t to talk business—” the colour deepened in her face. “I tell ye once for all, that as sure as God’s in heaven he’s fascinated with that girl! This isn’t the beginning of it—ye needn’t think it! She flirted with him in Dublin, and though she doesn’t care two snaps of her fingers for him she’s flirting with him now!”
The real Charlotte had seldom been nearer the surface than at this moment; and Mrs. Lambert cowered before the manifestation.
“You’re very unkind to me, Charlotte,” she said in a voice that was tremulous with fright and anger; “I wonder at you, that you would say such things to me about my own husband.”
“Well, perhaps you’d rather I said it to you now in confidence than that every soul in Lismoyle should be prating and talking about it, as they will be if ye don’t put down yer foot, and tell Roddy he’s making a fool of himself!”
Mrs. Lambert remained stunned for a few seconds at the bare idea of putting down her foot where Roderick was concerned, or of even insinuating that that supreme being could make a fool of himself, and then her eyes filled with tears of mortification.
“He is not making a fool of himself, Charlotte,” she said, endeavouring to pluck up spirit, “and you’ve no right to say anything of the kind. You might have more respect for your family than to be trying to raise scandal this way and upsetting me, and I not able for it!”
Charlotte looked at her, and kept back with an effort the torrent of bullying fury that was seething in her. She had no objection to upsetting Mrs. Lambert, but she preferred that hysterics should be deferred until she had established her point. Why she wished to establish it she did not explain to herself, but her restless jealousy, combined with her intolerance of the Fool’s Paradise in which Mrs. Lambert had entrenched herself, made it impossible for her to leave the subject alone.
“I think ye know it’s not my habit to raise scandal, Lucy, and I’m not one to make an assertion without adequate grounds for it,” she said in her strong, acrid voice; “as I said before, this flirtation is an old story. I have my own reasons for knowing that there was more going on than anyone suspected, from the time she was in short frocks till she came down here, and now, if she hadn’t another affair on hand, she’d have the whole country in a blaze about it. Why, d’ye know that habit she wears? It was your husband paid for that!”
She emphasised each word between her closed teeth, and her large face was so close to Mrs. Lambert’s, by the time she had finished speaking, that the latter shrank back.
“I don’t believe you, Charlotte,” she said with trembling lips; “how do you know it?”