"I do not understand you, Madame de Mellissie. I have never yet sought to entangle any one."
"You have; you know you have," she answered, giving the reins to her temper. "The letter I received warned me you were doing it, and that brought me over. You and he have dined alone, sat alone, walked alone; together always. Is it seemly that you, a dependent governess-girl, should cast a covetous eye upon a Chandos?"
My heart was beginning to beat painfully. What defence had I to make?
"Why did you leave me here, madam?"
"Leave you here! Because it suited my convenience. But I left you here as a dependent: a servant, so to say. I did not expect you to make yourself to into yourself into my brother's companion."
"Stay, Madame de Mellissie. I beg you to reflect a little before you reproach me. How could I help being your brother's companion, when he chose to make himself mine. This, the oak-parlour, was the general sitting-room; no other was shown to me for my use; was it my fault that Mr. Chandos also made it his? Could I ask to have my breakfast and dinner served in my bed-chamber?"
"I don't care," she intemperately rejoined. "I say that had you not been lost to all sense of propriety, of the fitness of things, you would have kept yourself beyond the notice of Mr. Harry Chandos. To-morrow morning you will leave."
"To whom are you speaking, Emily?" demanded a quiet voice behind us.
It was his; it was his. I drew back with a sort of gasping sob.
"I am speaking to Anne Hereford," she defiantly answered. "Giving her a warning of summary ejectment. She has been in the house rather too long!"