“Ah! what—do you possess feelings, then, my dear mother?” demanded the young woman, assuming an air of profound astonishment. “And yet you must have imagined that your daughter was totally without those same little feelings which it is so easy to wound, and so difficult to heal. Well—I will forbear: otherwise, I was about to have reminded you of those glorious times—before I was born, indeed—when you were the paramour of Sir Henry Courtenay, whose name you so pleasantly and quietly forged to a slip of paper one day——”
“Silence—Perdita—silence!” said Mrs. Fitzhardinge, in a hoarse and hollow tone—clasping her hands convulsively at the same time. “I was wrong to provoke you thus: you are very hard upon me—you have the best of it, Perdita—and I—I——”
Here the old wretch burst into tears,—not an assumed grief—no crocodile weeping,—but a flood of genuine tears, wrung from her by the cutting, biting, bitter sarcasms which her daughter had so mercilessly—so slaughterously levelled against her.
Perdita suffered her to weep without offering the least consolation: for the young woman was hurt and wounded on her side as well as the old harridan was hurt and wounded on the other.
The recriminations of those two females—that mother and daughter—had been terrible in their implacability, and appalling in their unnatural malignity.
There was a long pause—during which Mrs. Fitzhardinge sate sobbing—being absolutely hideous in her grief,—while Perdita—with flashing eyes dilating nostrils, flushing cheeks, and palpitating bosom, lay half reclined upon the sofa—tapping the carpet petulantly with the tip of her long, narrow, exquisitely shaped shoe.
“My dear child,” at length said the old woman, “are we to be friends or enemies?”
“That depends entirely upon yourself, mother,” was the answer: “I am not to be tyrannised over by you—nor menaced in the fearful way in which you have threatened me to-day, without showing resentment in return. Really, one would have supposed that you were addressing yourself to the bitterest enemy you had in the world—rather than to your daughter who has done all she could to place you in a comfortable position for the remainder of your days.”
“Well—well—let us be friends, Perdita!” exclaimed Mrs. Fitzhardinge.
“Yes—we will be friends,” responded the daughter. “But remember that my views in respect to Charles Hatfield—or rather, Viscount Marston—are to be carried into effect.”