Chapter X
Mrs. Challoner’s emotions upon reading her elder daughter’s letter found expression in a series of loud shrieks that brought Sophia running to her room. “Read that!” gasped the afflicted parent, and thrust the note into Sophia’s hands.
When Sophia had mastered its contents she wasted no time, but went off into strong hysterics, drumming her feet on the carpet, and becoming alarmingly rigid. Mrs. Challoner, a practical woman, dashed the contents of a jug of water over her, and upon Sophia recovering sufficiently to break into a flood of tears mixed with sobbing complaints of her sister’s wickedness, she sat down by her dressing-table, and thought very deeply. After some time, during which Sophia had worked herself into a white heat of fury, Mrs. Challoner said abruptly: “Hold your tongue, Sophy. It may do very well, after all.”
Sophia stared at her. Mrs. Challoner threw her a look of unusual impatience, and said: “If Vidal has run off with Mary, I’ll make him marry her.”
Sophia gave a choked scream of rage, “She shan’t have him! She shan’t, she shan’t! Oh, I shall die of mortification!”
“I never thought to marry Mary well,” went on her mother, unheeding, “but I begin to see that nothing in the world could be better than this. Lord, the Gunnings will be nothing to it! To think I was intending Joshua for Mary, and all the time the sly minx was meaning to steal Vidal from under your nose, Sophy! I declare I could positively laugh at myself for being so simple,”
Sophia sprang up, clenching her fists. “Mary to be a Marchioness? I tell you I’ll kill myself if she gets him!”
“Oh, don’t fret, Sophy,” Mrs. Challoner reassured her. “With your looks you will never want for a husband. But Mary, whom I never dreamed would be wed, unless it were to Joshua — ! La, it is the most amazingly fortunate thing that could ever be.”
“She isn’t going to marry Vidal!” Sophia said in a voice that shook with passion. “She’s gone to save my honour, the interfering, hateful wretch! And now it’s her honour will be ruined, and I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!”
Mrs. Challoner folded up Mary’s letter. “It’s for me to see she’s not ruined, and I promise you I shall see to it. My Lady Vidal — oh, it is famous! I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”