He slightly raised his hat. “Au revoir, ma’am!” he said, and drove on.
The door of the house was opened to Miss Grantham by Silas Wantage, who took one look at her flushed countenance, and said indulgently: “Now, what’s happened to put you into one of your tantrums, Miss Deb?”
“I am not in a tantrum!” replied Deborah furiously. “And if Lord Mablethorpe should call, I will see him!”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” said Wantage. “For he’s been here once already, and means to come again. I never saw anything like it, not in all my puff!”
“I wish you will not talk in that odiously vulgar way!” said Deborah.
“Not in a tantrum: oh, no!” said Mr Wantage, shaking his head. “And me that’s known you from your cradle! Your aunt says as how Master Kit’s a coming home on leave. What do you say to that?”
Miss Grantham, however, had nothing to say to it. She was an extremely fond sister, but for the moment the iniquities of Mr Ravenscar possessed her mind to the exclusion of all other interests. She ran upstairs to the little back-parlour on the half-landing, which was used as a morning-room. Lady Bellingham was writing letters there, at a spindle-legged table in the window. She looked up as her niece entered the room, and cried: “Well, my love, so you are back already! Tell me at once, did—” She broke off, as her eyes met Miss Grantham’s stormy ones. “Oh dear!” she said, in a dismayed voice. “What has happened?”
Miss Grantham untied her bonnet-strings with a savage jerk, and cast the bonnet on to a chair. “He is the vilest, rudest, stupidest, horridest man alive! Oh, but I will serve him out for this! I will make him sorry he ever dared—I’ll have no mercy on him! He shall grovel to me! Oh, I am in such a rage.”
“Yes, my love, I can see you are,” said her aunt faintly. “Did he—did he make love to you?”
“Love!” exclaimed Miss Grantham. “No, indeed! My thoughts did not lie in that direction! I am a harpy, if you please, Aunt Lizzie! Women like me should be whipped at the cart’s tail!”