“Oh! do tell me about it, Doctor, if it is not a secret! You know I have a kind of interest in Harriet Brandt!”
“When she does not interfere with the prospects of your family,” observed the doctor, drily, “exactly so! Well, then, the poor girl is in great trouble, and I had very little consolation to give her! She has left Madame Gobelli’s house. It seems that the old woman insulted her terribly and almost turned her out.”
“Oh! that awful Baroness!” cried Margaret; “it is only what might have been expected! We heard dreadful stories about her at Heyst. She has an uncontrollable temper and, when offended, a most vituperative tongue. Her ill-breeding is apparent at all times, but it must be overwhelming when she is angry. But how did she insult Miss Brandt?”
“You remember what I told you of the girl’s antecedents! It appears that the Baroness must have got hold of the same story, for she cast it in her teeth, accusing her moreover of having caused the death of her son.”
“Madame Gobelli’s son? What! Bobby—Oh! you do not mean to say that Bobby—is dead?”
“Yes! There was but one son, I think! He died yesterday, as I understood Miss Brandt. And the mother in her rage and grief turned upon the poor girl and told her such bitter truths, that she rushed from the house at once. Her visit to me this morning was paid in order to ascertain if such things were true, as the Baroness, very unjustifiably I think, had referred her to me for confirmation.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her? At first I declined to give an opinion, but she put such pertinent questions to me, that unless I had lied, I saw no way of getting out of it. I glossed over matters as well as I could, but even so, they were bad enough. But I impressed it upon her that she must not think of marrying. I thought it the best way to put all idea of catching Captain Pullen out of her mind. Let him once get safely married, and she can decide for herself with regard to the next. But at all hazards, we must keep Ralph out of her way, for between you and me and the post, she is a young woman whom most men would find it difficult to resist.”
“Oh! yes! she and Ralph must not meet again,” said Margaret, dreamingly. Her thoughts had wandered back to Bobby and Heyst, and all the trouble she had encountered whilst there. What despair had attacked her when she lost her only child, and now Madame Gobelli—the woman she so much disliked—had lost her only child also.
“Poor Madame Gobelli!” she ejaculated, “I cannot help thinking of her! Fancy Bobby being—dead! And she used to make him so unhappy, and humiliate him before strangers! How she must be suffering for it now! How it must all come back upon her! Poor Bobby! Elinor will be sorry to hear that he is gone! She used to pity him so, and often gave him fruit and cakes. Fancy his being dead! I cannot believe it.”