“Garnet Seabright. I say you have killed her.”
“Killed her! why I haint even tetched her. I haint done a thing to her; I haint harmed a hair of her head. I haint been a-nigh her. She was well enough when I come through here with the napkins.”
“Words kill! You told her the secret of her birth. You told her she was General Garnet’s child, and the shock and the shame have overwhelmed, have killed her.”
The old lady listened with her eyes starting out of her head, and her mouth wide open with unmeasured astonishment, and then exclaimed:
“Me! Me tell her she was General Garnet’s child! Why, I didn’t do no such thing! Who says I did?”
“I! I heard you with my own ears.”
“Why, you didn’t hear any such a thing! High! how could I tell such a lie as that, when it wa’n’t the truth?”
Mrs. Garnet, in her turn, stared with such unbounded astonishment and incredulity, that the old lady took high offense, and exclaimed:
“Well! upon my word! Next time it lightens, I shouldn’t wonder if you accused me of setting the clouds afire. Come! if you don’t b’lieve me, there’s the young gal herself. Go ask her now. She aint dying neither, no more ’an I am. She looks gashly as a corpse, to be sure, but Lord! I’ve seen her look that way afore, when she’d get into her tantrums long o’ her guardian or Hugh. Come! I’ll go;” and the old lady waddled precipitately across the room to the sofa, exclaiming wrathfully, “Miss Seabright! Garnet Seabright, I say! Now, did ever I tell you such a falsity as that you were General Garnet’s child?”
Dr. Hutton started up from his kneeling posture, and stood staring at the excited old lady. Garnet sprang up from the cushions, and gazed at her face with all her soul in her eyes.