Charlotte was standing, yellow-faced and insolent, opposite to Lambert, with her hands in the pockets of her apron; in every way a contrast to him, with his flushed forehead and suffused eyes. The dull, white light that struck up into the roof from the whitewashed kitchen wall, showed Lambert the furrowed paths of implacability in his adversary’s face, as plainly as it showed her his defeat and desperation.
“You’ve got no more money to lend, d’ye say!” he repeated, with a laugh that showed he had courage enough left to lose his temper; “I suppose you’ve got all the money you got eighteen months ago from the old lady lent out? ’Pon my word, considering you got Francie’s share of it for yourself, I think it would have been civiller to have given her husband the first refusal of a loan! I daresay I’d have given you as good interest as your friends in Ferry Lane!”
Charlotte’s eyes suddenly lost their exaggerated indifference.
“And if she ever had the smallest claim to what ye call a share!” she vociferated, “haven’t you had it twenty times over? Was there ever a time that ye came cringing and crawling to me for money that I refused it to ye? And how do you thank me? By embezzling the money I paid for the land, and then coming to try and get it out of me over again, because Sir Christopher Dysart is taught sense to look into his own affairs, and see how his agent is cheating him!”
Some quality of triumph in her tone, some light of previous knowledge in her eye, struck Lambert.
“Was it you told him?” he said hoarsely, “was it you spoke to Dysart?”
Even now and then in the conduct of her affairs, Miss Mullen permitted the gratification of her temper to take the place of the slower pleasure of secrecy.
“Yes, I told him,” she answered, without hesitation.
“You went to Dysart, and set him on to ruin me!” said Lambert, in a voice that had nearly as much horror as rage in it.
“And may I ask you what you’ve ever done for me,” she said, gripping her hammer with a strong, trembling hand, “that I was to keep your tricks from being found out for you? What reason was there in God’s earth that I wasn’t to do my plain duty by those that are older friends than you?”