"Think not to move me with a show of kindness," said Lydia, drawing back her hands in a contemptuous manner: "your overtures of good treatment come too late!"
"But I will make amends for the past—I will henceforth consider you as my sister," exclaimed Adeline, raising her eyes in an imploring manner towards the vengeful woman. "I will do all I can to repair my former ingratitude—only be forbearing with me—if not for my sake, at least for the sake of my unborn babe!"
"Your maternal feelings have improved in quality of late," said Lydia, with a scornful curl of the lip; "for—as you must well remember—your first babe was consigned to me to be concealed in a pond, or thrust into some hole—you cared not how nor where, so long as it was hidden from every eye."
"Of all the agonies which you make me endure, detestable woman," ejaculated Adeline, rising from her knees in a perfect fury of rage and despair, "that perpetual recurrence to the past is the most intolerable of all! Tell me—do you want to kill me by a slow and lingering death? or do you wish to drive me mad—mad?" she repeated, her eyes rolling wildly, and her delicate hands clenching as she screamed forth the word.
The scene was really an awful one—a scene to which no powers of description can possibly do justice.
The stern, inflexible tyranny of Lydia Hutchinson forced Lady Ravensworth to pass through all the terrible ordeal of the most tearing and heart-breaking emotions.
Did the miserable peeress endeavour to screen herself within the stronghold of a sullen silence, the words of Lydia Hutchinson would gradually fall upon her, one after the other, with an irritating power that at length goaded her to desperation. Did she meet accusation by retort, and encounter reproach with upbraiding, the inveteracy of Lydia's torturing language wound her feelings up to such a pitch that it was no wonder she should ask, with an agonising scream, whether the avenging woman sought to drive her mad? Or, again, did she endeavour to move the heart of her hired servant by self-humiliation and passionate appeal, the coldness, or the malignant triumph with which those manifestations were received awoke within her that proud and haughty spirit which was now so nearly subdued altogether.
"Do you wish to drive me mad?" Lady Ravensworth had said:—then, when the accompanying paroxysm of feeling was past, she threw herself on a chair, and burst into an agony of tears.
But Lydia was not softened!
She suffered Adeline to weep for a few minutes; and when the unhappy lady was exhausted—subdued—spirit-broken—the unrelenting torturess repeated her command—"You can now arrange my hair."