"What," cried Tanty, while her withered cheek flushed, "do you mean to tell me that my nephew, Sir Adrian Landale, will decline to come a few hundred yards to see his old aunt—his mother's own sister—who has come three hundred miles, at seventy years of age, to see him in his own house—in his own house?" repeated the irate old lady, rattling the spoon with much emphasis against her cup. "If you mean this, Rupert, it is an insult to me which I shall never forget—never."
She rose from her seat as she concluded, shaking with the tremulous anger of age.
"For God's sake, Tanty," cried Rupert, throwing into his voice all the generous warmth he was capable of simulating, "do not hold me responsible for Adrian in this matter. His strange vagaries are not of my suggesting, heaven knows."
"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, loftily, "if you will kindly send the letter I am about to write to your brother, by a safe messenger, immediately, I shall believe that it is your wish to treat me with proper respect, whatever may be Adrian's subsequent behaviour."
Mr. Landale's countenance assumed an expression of very genuine distress; this was just the one proof of dutiful attachment that he was loth to bestow upon his cherished aunt.
"I see how it is," he exclaimed earnestly, coming up to the old lady, and laying his hand gently upon her arm, "you entirely misunderstand the situation. I am not a free agent in this matter. I cannot do what you ask; I am bound by pledge. Adrian is, undoubtedly, more than—peculiar on certain points, and, really, I dare not, if I would, thwart him."
"Oh!" cried Tanty, shooting off the ejaculation as from a pop-gun. Then, shaking herself free of Rupert's touch, she sat down abruptly in her chair again, and began fanning herself with her handkerchief. Not even in her interchange of amenities with Mrs. Hambledon, had Molly seen her display so much indignation.
"You want me to believe he is mad, I suppose?" she snapped, at last.
"Dear me! No, no, no!" responded the other, in his airy way. "I did not mean to go so far as that; but—well, there are very painful matters, and hitherto I have avoided all discussion upon them, even with Sophia. My affection for Adrian——"
"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted Tanty. "You meant something, I suppose; either the man's mad, or he is not. And I, for one, don't believe a word of it. The worst sign about him, that I can see, is the blind confidence the poor fellow seems to put in you."