"In her own 'boudwore,'" said Jenkins—"first door on the right, at the top of the stairs," and I left Lady Broadhem being ministered to with sal-volatile, and went in search of her daughter.
Lady Ursula was writing, and as she looked up I saw the traces of tears upon her cheeks, though she smiled as she frankly gave me her hand. "I half expected you, Lord Frank, as I knew you were to call on mamma to-day, and I thought you would not leave without seeing me; but I expected to have been sent for. Don't you know that this is very sacred ground, and that the privilege of treading upon it is accorded to very few?"
"I have that to tell you," I said, gravely, "which I can only talk of privately. I have left Lady Broadhem down-stairs, and it is the result of my interview with her that I want to communicate to you. Do you know that she contemplated taking a very serious step?"
I did not know how to approach the subject, and felt embarrassed now that I found myself obliged to explain to a daughter that her mother was going to marry the man that daughter had rejected, as an act of revenge.
"No," said Lady Ursula. "I have suspected by her preoccupied manner for many days past that mamma had decided upon something, but I have shrunk from speaking to her of her own plans. Indeed she seemed to have avoided me in a way which she never did before."
"Before telling you what she intended doing, I must premise that she has quite abandoned the idea; therefore don't let yourself be distressed by what might have been, but won't be now."
I risked this assertion as, though Lady Broadhem had not told me that she had abandoned the idea, and was at that moment in a dead faint, I felt certain that her first impulse on "coming to" would be to abandon it. "Well," said Lady Ursula, with her lip trembling and her eye cast down, "if you think it right that you should tell me, do so; remember she is my mother."
"It was nothing so very dreadful after all," I said, and tried to reassure her by a careless manner—for I saw how much she dreaded the unknown.
"The fact is, Lady Broadhem has been driven to despair by the family embarrassments, and we must make allowances for her under the circumstances. Then perhaps she was under the influence of pique. At all events, she has made up her mind to accept a proposal which Mr Chundango had the audacity to make."
Lady Ursula raised her eyes in a bewildered way to mine. It was evident that she had failed even now to comprehend me. What business, I thought, had I to come up here after all? It is a piece of impertinence in me; and I trembled at my rashness. What will she think? I shall shock her, and ruin myself in her estimation irretrievably; and I wished myself back again, slapping the soles of Lady Broadhem's feet; but Lady Broadhem was already making use of those very soles, and was marching up-stairs at that identical moment; for before I could find words to explain my meaning more fully to Lady Ursula, and while I was yet doubting whether I should not back out of the whole subject, in stalked her ladyship, very white, with lips compressed, and an expression on her face which so terrified Ursula that she forgot my speech in the amazement and alarm which her mother's aspect caused her. "What are you doing in my daughter's private sitting-room, Lord Frank?" said Lady Broadhem, between her teeth.