Mrs. Jasher stared, then her face grew redder than the rouge on her cheeks, and she stamped furiously in the neat Louis Quinze slippers in which she had in judiciously come out.
“How dare you say what you have said?” she cried, her voice shrill and hard with anger. “Mr. Hope has been saying the same thing. Are you both mad? I never set eyes on the horrid thing in my life. And only to-night you told me that you loved—”
“Yes, yes, I said many foolish things, I don't doubt, madam. But that is not the question. My mummy! my mummy!” he rapped the wood furiously—“how does my mummy come to be here?”
“I don't know,” said Mrs. Jasher, still furious, “and I don't care.”
“Don't care: don't care, when I look forward to your helping me in my lifework! As my wife—”
“I shall never be your wife,” cried the widow, stamping again. “I wouldn't be your wife for a thousand or a million pounds. Marry your mummy, you horrid, red-faced, crabbed little—”
“Hush! hush!” whispered Lucy, taking the angry woman round the waist, “you must make allowances for my father. He is so excited over his good fortune that he—”
“I shall not make allowance,” interrupted Mrs. Jasher angrily. “He practically accuses me of stealing the mummy. If I did that, I must have murdered poor Sidney Bolton.”
“No, no,” cried the Professor, wiping his red face. “I never hinted at such a thing. But the mummy is in your garden.”
“What of that? I don't know how it came there. Mr. Hope, surely you do not support Professor Braddock in his preposterous accusation?”