“Then you expect wrong,” answered Lady Augusta. “If Miss Channing leaves, it will be by my dismissal. And I am not sure but I shall do it,” she added, nodding her head.
“What for?” asked Roland, lazily.
“It is not pleasant to retain, as instructress to my children, one whose brother is a thief.”
Roland tumbled off the sofa, and rose up with a great cry—a cry of passionate anger, of aroused indignation. “What?” he thundered.
“Good gracious! are you going mad?” uttered my lady. “What is Arthur Channing to you, that you should take up his cause in this startling way upon every possible occasion?”
“He is this to me—that he has nobody else to stand up for him,” stuttered Roland, so excited as to impede his utterance. “We were both in the same office, and the shameful charge might have been cast upon me, as it was cast upon him. It was mere chance. Channing is as innocent of it as you, mother; he is as innocent as that precious dean, who has been wondering whether he shall dismiss him from the Cathedral. A charitable lot you all are!”
“I’m sure I don’t want to be uncharitable,” cried Lady Augusta, whose heart was kind enough in the main. “And I am sure the dean never was uncharitable in his life: he is too good and enlightened a man to be uncharitable. Half the town says he must be guilty, and what is one to think? Then you would not recommend me to let it make any difference to Miss Channing’s coming here?”
“No!” burst forth Roland, in a tone that might have brought down the roof, had it been made of glass. “I’d scorn such wicked injustice.”
“If I were you, I’d ‘scorn’ to put myself into these fiery tempers, upon other people’s business,” cried my lady.
“It is my business,” retorted Roland. “Better go into tempers than be hard and unjust. What would William Yorke say at your speaking so of Miss Channing?”