"After all," commented the thin man with unconscious cruelty, in the sudden silence that followed these words: "vulgarity is not vice. It is involuntary and unconscious."
That was the last, worst stripe of all, that and M. Isidore's knowledge and compassionate betrayal of her sufferings. "Vulgarity." The word blistered her ears; she caught up a scarf, threw it over her face, and fled down the marble steps, past the comfortable matron, nearly upsetting her, and through the grounds, dashing in her wild career against some one, she neither knew nor cared whom.
Mr. Welbourne himself felt the vitriol of his ill-considered speech the moment it was spoken, but knew it to be past mending, and groaned audibly, while every member of the group, with the exception of Major Norris, who was a disciplinarian and a thoroughly good hater when once he began, was more or less visited by compunction.
"After all, it was beastly mean of us," Bertie Trevor said, turning away with a sullen face, when the flight of the victim was known.
"'Twas the way she acted to the lame lady set up my back," Mrs. Dinwiddie confessed.
"And quite right too," the Major rejoined; "the girl was a positive pest to everybody in the house."
"But at least," came in French, in a deep contralto voice from the spot whence the sufferer had fled, causing every eye to be raised to that eminence, to perceive the majestic figure of Madame Bontemps, a large cauliflower tucked under each arm, an apron full of fresh-gathered lemons and oranges, and a sharp bright knife threateningly flourished in her hand. "At least, this demoiselle was not chased from the house for inveigling the fiancé and breaking the heart of an innocent young girl."
Having thus spoken, Madame turned and receded majestically from sight, leaving the conspirators petrified with amazement.
"What on earth is she driving at?" asked Ermengarde, looking straight at M. Isidore, a sudden flood of enlightenment rushing in crimson over her face and throat even as she spoke, and leaving her death-pale and trembling.
M. Isidore's face, from which she quickly withdrew her gaze, was marble in its rigid impenetrability. He made no reply, beyond a faint shrug of ignorance, but turned and offered some slight service to the lady standing next him. Then the group, which had been shifting the whole time, soon melted quietly away, each member with a feeling of having done an indifferent morning's work in this long-threatened and carefully planned conspiracy of rough justice.