At this moment a female voice in distress is heard, and poor Lady May comes pushing out of the pretty little room, in which Grace Maubray had placed her, sobbing and shedding floods of tears.
“I can't stay there any longer, for I hear everything; I can't help hearing every word—honest old woman, and all—opprobrious. Oh! how can people be so? how can they? Oh! I'm very angry—I'm very angry—I'm very angry!”
If Miss Maubray were easily moved to pity she might have been at sight of the big innocent eyes turned up at her, from which rolled great tears, making visible channels through the paint down her cheeks. She sobbed and wept like a fat, good-natured child, and pitifully she continued sobbing, “Oh, I'm a-a-ho—very angry; wha-at shall I do-o-o, my dear? I-I'm very angry—oh, oh—I'm very a-a-angry!”
“So am I,” said Grace Maubray, with a fiery glance at the young baronet, who stood fixed where he was, like an image of death; “and I had intended, dear Lady May, telling you a thing which Sir Richard Arden may as well hear, as I mean to write to tell Alice to-day; it is that I am to be married—I have accepted Lord Wynderbroke—and—and that's all.”
Sir Richard, I believe, said “Good-bye.” Nobody heard him. I don't think he remembers how he got on his horse. I don't think the ladies saw him leave the room—only, he was gone.
Poor Lady May takes her incoherent leave. She has got her veil over her face, to baffle curiosity. Miss Maubray stands at the window, the tip of her finger to her brilliant lip, contemplating Lady May as she gets in with a great jerk and swing of the carriage, and she hears the footman say “Home,” and sees a fat hand, in a lilac glove, pull up the window hurriedly. Then she sits down on a sofa, and laughs till she quivers again, and tears overflow her eyes; and she says in the intervals, almost breathlessly,—
“Oh, poor old thing! I really am sorry. Who could have thought she cared so much? Poor old soul! what a ridiculous old thing!”
Such broken sentences of a rather contemptuous pity rolled and floated along the even current of her laughter.
