“Who is that woman? what does she want?” Hyacinth asked, his small, clear voice ringing over the dreary room.
“She wants you to come near her, she wants to kiss you, sir,” said Mrs Bowerbank, as if it were more than he deserved.
“I won’t kiss her; Pinnie says she stole a watch!” the child answered with resolution.
“Oh, you dreadful—how could you ever?” cried Pinnie, blushing all over and starting out of her chair.
It was partly Amanda’s agitation, perhaps, which, by the jolt it administered, gave an impulse to the sick woman, and partly the penetrating and expressive tone in which Hyacinth announced his repugnance: at any rate, Florentine, in the most unexpected and violent manner, jerked herself up from her pillow, and, with dilated eyes and waving hands, shrieked out, “Ah, quelle infamie! I never stole a watch, I never stole anything—anything! Ah, par exemple!” Then she fell back, sobbing with the passion that had given her a moment’s strength.
“I’m sure you needn’t put more on her than she has by rights,” said Mrs Bowerbank, with dignity, to the dressmaker, laying a large red hand upon the patient, to keep her in her place.
“Mercy, more? I thought it so much less!” cried Miss Pynsent, convulsed with confusion and jerking herself, in a wild tremor, from the mother to the child, as if she wished to fling herself upon one for contrition and upon the other for revenge.
“Il a honte de moi—il a honte de moi!” Florentine repeated, in the misery of her sobs, “Dieu de bonté, quelle horreur!”
Miss Pynsent dropped on her knees beside the bed and, trying to possess herself of Florentine’s hand again, protested with a passion almost equal to that of the prisoner (she felt that her nerves had been screwed up to the snapping-point, and now they were all in shreds) that she hadn’t meant what she had told the child, that he hadn’t understood, that Florentine herself hadn’t understood, that she had only said she had been accused and meant that no one had ever believed it. The Frenchwoman paid no attention to her whatever, and Amanda buried her face and her embarrassment in the side of the hard little prison-bed, while, above the sound of their common lamentation, she heard the judicial tones of Mrs Bowerbank.
“The child is delicate, you might well say! I’m disappointed in the effect—I was in hopes you’d hearten her up. The doctor’ll be down on me, of course; so we’ll just pass out again.”