"Die!" cried Lady Juliana, struggling with a thousand terrors; "Nonsense! for what? Do you suppose no man was ever angry with his wife before? You are so unused to it, it seems strange to you, but you may assure yourself few wives would think it so extraordinary."
By this time they had reached Ellen's dressing-room, where, having placed her on a sofa, and given her some restoratives, Lady Juliana said, "But what is all this about—what offence have you committed?"
"Oh! madam, I know not; but it is too true, St. Aubyn has said such words to me, such words as I never thought to hear from him!"
"What is the meaning of all this?" said Lady Juliana, turning to Jane. "Speak, girl, if you have not quite lost your senses, or do not wish that I should lose mine, and tell me where your lady has been, and what has happened."
Jane, now, as well as the confusion she was in would let her, repeated the adventures of the morning to Lady Juliana, the visit to the officer's widow, and the old blind lady; and lastly, why they went to Mrs. Birtley's: "And it was I," she said, "that persuaded her Ladyship to go to that disagreeable Mrs. Birtley's—out of pride, I own it—it was out of pride, that she might see what a grand place I had got, and that my lady was not the sort of person that cross old woman fancied she was; and her Ladyship would not even have alighted or gone into her trumpery parlour, if the horses had not been so frightful, and the coachman said, says he, "my Lady had better alight, for the horses—"
"Grant me patience!" said Lady Juliana: "this girl's tongue is enough to distract me! Well, and when you were in her trumpery parlour, as you call it, what happened then? Was Lord St. Aubyn angry that you went there?"
"Oh! no, my Lady, not for that; but the instant after we went in, and while Mrs. Birtley was chattering about the book, and about her lodger (and to be sure there never was such another chattering woman in the world, and looking at my lady from head to foot, so saucy-like, I was quite in a passion with her), I saw my lady turn pale, and thinking she was going to faint, I made Mrs. Birtley go for some water, for I knew well enough how your Ladyship would scold if my Lady was to be ill, and so I told Mrs. Birtley."
"Will this tale ever have an end?" cried the impatient Lady Juliana.
"Well, my Lady, and so just as Mrs. Birtley was gone for the water, and we were got up to go away, in came a young man: I believe, for my part, he was quite mad, not indeed that I am any particular judge of mad people, for I remember the first day your Ladyship came here I thought—but I believe I had better not tell that;—however, this young man was mad for certain, for the moment he saw my Lady, he ran to her, and seemed as if he was going to catch her in his arms. I screamed, and when her Ladyship said she was terrified, he quite raved, and called her names, and said something about her shame, and her being ruined, and her jewels, last night, and I don't know what."
"And who, for Heaven's sake, was this man?" asked the astonished Lady Juliana.