“Ah, poor milady! what you do suffer,” said the sympathising Justine; “you make me so much to think of that poor Job, only he was a great lord and not a lady, and you have not the boil.”
“My poor Justine,” sighed her ladyship, as she smiled patronisingly at the innocence of her handmaiden, “there are moral and social boils as well as those external, and when I sit here alone, forsaken by my children—by my husband—by all who should be dear, left alone to the tender sympathies of an alien who is all probity and truth—”
“Yes, poor milady, I suffer for you,” said Justine.
“Thanks, good Justine, you faithful creature,” said her ladyship, sighing; “I could not exist if it were not for you.”
And Justine said to herself maliciously, “I am what that wicked young man calls a hom-bogues.”
Chapter Twenty Two.
Lady Maude goes Mad.
Meanwhile Maude had sought Lord Barmouth, whom she surprised in a corner of the library, feeding his wolf and studying the wing of a chicken, which he was picking with great gusto. He did not hear her entry, and he was talking to himself as he lifted up and smelt his pocket-handkerchief.