"Sir Gilbert," said Mowbray, colouring to the temples, "my mother is married!"
"The devil she is!" thundered the old man, clenching his fists. "Married, is she?—Jezebel!—May your poor father's ghost haunt her to her dying hour!—Married! To that canting cur the Vicar of Wrexhill? Is it not so?"
"Even so, Sir Gilbert."
"Heaven help you, my poor children!" said Lady Harrington in accents of the deepest sorrow; "this is a grief that it will indeed be hard to bear!"
"And we come to you for counsel how to bear it, my dear lady," said Mowbray, "though little choice is left us. Yet, Helen says, if you tell her that she must submit to call this man her father, it will be easier for her to do it."
"Bless her, darling child!" said the old lady, fondly caressing her; "how shall I ever find the heart to bid her do what it must break her heart to think of?"
"Bid her call that rascal father?" cried Sir Gilbert. "My Lady Harrington must be strangely altered, Mowbray, before she will do that: she is a very rebellious old lady, and a most prodigious shrew; but you do her no justice, Charles, in believing she would utter such atrocious words."
"But what is to become of Helen, my dear Sir Gilbert, if she quarrel with this man?"
"Come to us, to be sure,—what's the man to her? Has your precious mother made any settlement upon you all?"
"I imagine not; indeed I may say that I am sure she has not."