"It is abominable—unheard of!" was the calmest expression he could think of. "Something must be done—quickly too! I should like to wring the insolent little beggar's neck for him! What did he do, to-day?"
For answer she pushed up her sleeve, showing him two livid bruises on a dazzlingly white arm—an arm with a dimpled round elbow.
"I caught him smoking in the stable, which is forbidden because of setting fire to the straw," she faltered, "and I told him he ought not to do it, so he did what he calls the 'screw.' You don't know how it hurts!"
Osmond's wrath surmounted even his love.
"But why don't you box his ears—why don't you give him a lesson—cowardly little beggar!" he cried. "You are bigger than he, Miss Brabourne, you ought to be more than a match for him!"
A burst of tears came.
"I don't even know how to hit," she sobbed, childishly. "I don't know anything that other people know; and, if I tell of him, he pays me out so dreadfully! He puts frogs in my bed, and takes away my candle, and the other night he dressed up in a sheet, and made phosphorous eyes, and nearly frightened me out of my senses, and I don't dare tell because—because he would do something even worse if I did! Oh, you don't know what he is. He catches birds and mice, and cuts them up alive—he says he is going to be a doctor, and he is practising vivisection; and he makes me look while he is doing it—if I don't he has ways of punishing me. He made me smoke a cigar, and I was so terribly sick, and he made me steal the sideboard keys, and get whiskey for him, and said if I did not he would tell aunts something that would make them forbid me to come to the picnic. He was tipsy last night," she shuddered, "really tipsy. He made me help him up to his room, and tell aunts he was not well, and could not come down to supper. Oh!" she burst out, "you don't know what my life is! He makes me miserable! I hate him! But I daren't tell, you don't know what he would do if I told!" Her face crimsoned with remembrance of insult. "I can't tell you the worst things, I can't!" she cried, "but he is dreadful. Every little thing I say or do, he remembers, and seems to see how he can make me suffer for it. I have no peace, day or night; and he is so good when aunts are there. They don't know how wicked he is."
"But surely," urged Osmond, gently, "if you were to tell the Misses Willoughby, they would send him home, and then you would be free from him?"
She dashed away the tears from her eyes, and shook her head with a smile full of bitterness.
"They wouldn't believe me," she said, "they never have believed me; that is, Aunt Charlotte wouldn't, and she is the one who rules. They would call Godfrey and ask if it was true, and he—he thinks nothing of telling a lie. Oh! he is a sneak and a coward! If you knew how he has curried favor since he has been here! Aunt Charlotte likes him—she will give him things she would never give me! She would never believe my word against his."