Mrs. Errington had finished her harangue with much majesty, bringing out the closing sentences as if they were a most unexpected and powerful climax, when the effect of the whole was marred by her giving a violent start and exclaiming, with more naturalness than dignity, "Mercy on us! Castalia, what will you do next? Do shut that window, for pity's sake! I shall get my death of cold!"
Castalia had opened the window, and was leaning out of it, regardless of the sleet which fell in slanting lines and beat against her cheek. "I knew that was his step," she said, speaking, as it seemed, more to herself than to her mother-in-law. "And he has no umbrella, and those light shoes on!" She ran to the fireplace and stirred the fire into a blaze, displaying an activity which was singularly contrasted with her usual languid slowness of movement. "Can't you give him some hot wine and water?" she asked, ringing the bell at the same time. When her husband came in she removed his damp great-coat with her own hands, made him sit down near the fire, and brought him a pair of his mother's slippers, which were quite sufficiently roomy to admit his slender feet. Algernon submitted to be thus cherished and taken care of, declaring, with an amused smile, as he sipped the hot negus, that this fuss was very kind, but entirely unnecessary, as he had not been three minutes in the rain.
As to Mrs. Errington, she was so perplexed by her daughter-in-law's sudden change of mood and manner, that she lost her presence of mind, and remained gazing from Algernon to his wife very blankly. "I never knew such a thing!" thought the good lady. "One moment she's raging and scolding, and abusing her husband for deceiving her, and the next she is petting him up as if he was a baby!"
When the fly was announced, and Castalia left the little drawing-room to put on her cloak and bonnet, Mrs. Errington drew near to her son and whispered to him solemnly, "Algy, there is something very strange about your wife. I never saw such a changed creature within the last few weeks. Don't you think you should have some one to see her?—some professional person I mean? I fear that her brain is affected!"
"Good gracious, mother! Another lunatic? You are getting to have a monomania on that subject yourself!" Algernon laughed as he said it.
"My dear, there may be two persons afflicted in the same way, may there not? But I said nothing about lunatics, Algy. Only—really, I think some temporary disturbance of the brain is going on. I do, indeed."
"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense, ma'am! But it is odd enough that you are the second person who has made that agreeable suggestion to me within a fortnight. Poor Cassy! That's all she gets by her airs and her temper."
"Another person, was there?"
"Yes; it was little Miss Chubb, and——"
"Miss Chubb! Upon my word, I think that Miss Chubb was guilty of taking a considerable liberty in suggesting anything of the kind about the Honourable Mrs. Ancram Errington!"