“Ay,” interrupted my Lady quietly, and still thinking that the prejudice of her waiting-maid had much exaggerated matters, “that was partly my fault; I begged Miss Aynton to be more complaisant in her manner to Sir Richard.”
“Well, Master Walter might have been annoyed, madam, but what right had he to be jealous! and especially what relation could exist between him and Miss Rose, which justified him in using such dreadful words? Fancy swearing at her, my Lady!”
“Yes, that is shocking indeed, Mary. Miss Letty, however, must certainly have misunderstood him.”
“That's what I told her, my Lady, in hopes to quiet her a bit; but I did not believe it myself, no more than you do. We don't suppose that Miss Letty invented the oaths, do we?”
“That is true,” sighed Lady Lisgard. “It makes me very wretched to think that my boy Walter should have so far forgotten himself as to use such language to a young girl—a guest, too, in his mother's house. I shall certainly demand an explanation of it from his own lips.”
“Alas, there is no need, madam,” returned the waiting-maid. “I can tell you all—if you can bear to listen to it.”
“I am listening,” said my Lady wearily; but she sat with her back towards Mistress Forest, and once, in the course of her recital, she uttered a piteous moan, and covered her face with her hands.
“When Miss Letty told me what I have just said, my Lady, and had parted from me a little comforted, trying to persuade herself that she really might have been mistaken in what she had overheard, I instantly sought out Anne Rees, and bade her come with me to my room. You wouldn't have believed it in a girl as you yourself chose out of the village school, and who has been at the Abbey under my own eye for four years; but she refused point-blank: very respectful, I must say, but also very firm. 'I durstn't do it,' said she, all of a twitter—'not till Miss Rose is abed and asleep; or if I do, you may be certain sure as she will come to know it, and get out of me every word that may pass between us two.'
“The girl looked as scared as though she had seen a ghost, and yet my request did not seem to come on her at all unexpected; and, in point of fact, she knew what she was wanted for well enough. However, I thought it best to let her have her way; and so it was arranged that she was to come to my room as soon as she had done with the young ladies—although 'tis little enough, indeed, she has done for Miss Letty of late weeks, but all for that spiteful little hussy, Miss Rose.
“'Now,' said I when I got her alone, 'Anne Rees, there is nobody to listen to what we say, and you may speak to me as to your own mother.'