“Stay where you are, boy,” she cried, with her eyes flashing. “Will you obey me?”
“No—no—no,” said Trevor, impatiently, and he tried to extricate himself. “Nurse, you are mad.”
“Don’t call me nurse,” she cried, viciously. “Do as I bid you, or I’ll make you rue it till your deathbed. But, no, I can’t do that. Richard, you shall mind me—you shall obey me in this. I have a right to be minded.”
“Mrs Lloyd, you have gone to the extent of your right, and beyond it; from henceforth you and your husband must find another home. You shall have a comfortable income, but this cannot go on. There, I cannot leave you in this way—come up to the house.”
He tried to lead her, but she broke away.
“You will have it then?” she hissed, in a hoarse whisper. “Richard, is this the way you treat your mother?”
“My—”
Trevor started back to the extent of their arms, looking at the woman aghast. The fancy that she was distraught had passed away during the last few minutes, and there was such an air of decision and truth in her words and looks that he staggered beneath the shock. The past, her determined action, her opposition to his will—so different to the behaviour of a dependent, and explained at the time on the score of old service—and many little words and looks, notably her passionate embrace on the night of the encounter in the study, all came back to him like a flash, and he could find no words for quite a minute.
“It’s a lie!” he said at last. “Woman, how dare you? My father was too honourable a gentleman ever to descend to a low intrigue with one of his servants.”
“Yes,” said the woman, “and Martha Jane Lloyd was too good a wife to have listened to him if he had.”