“You may well ask, my dear,” answered the voice of Mrs Latrobe, behind Phoebe. “Your cousin has been conducting herself in a most improper manner—offering gross insults to my guests in my house.”
“Phoebe!” cried Rhoda, as if she could not believe her ears.
“Yes, Phoebe. She really has. I can only fear—indeed, I had almost said hope—that her wits are something impaired. What think you of her telling a gentleman who had acted in a most noble and honourable manner—exactly as a gentleman should do—that she could not have believed him capable of such baseness? and she cried shame on him!”
“Not Phoebe!” exclaimed Rhoda again, looking from one to the other very much as Phoebe had done. “Why, Phoebe, what does all this mean?”
“Oh, Rhoda, I can’t tell you!” said Phoebe, sobbing, for the reaction had come. “Mother, you will have to tell her. I can’t.”
“Of course I shall tell her,” calmly answered Mrs Latrobe. “I came for that very thing. Rhoda, my dear, I am sure you are a maid of sense and discretion.”
“I hope so, Madam.”
“So do I, child: and therefore you will hear me calmly, and not fly into passions like that silly maid yonder. My dear, you must have remembered, I am certain, that when you promised yourself to Mr Welles, you were in a very different situation from now.”
Rhoda only bowed. Perhaps, on that subject, she was afraid to trust her voice.
“And, of course, it has also occurred to you, my dear, that this being the case, you could not in honour hold Mr Welles bound to you any longer, if he wished to be free?”