"I was only thinking of your comfort, mother," he replied to her fierce rejoinder. "This is so different from what you have been accustomed to."
"Circumstances are different," she said curtly.
"Have you but one servant in the whole house? For everything?"
"She is enough for me: she is a faithful woman. I tell you that circumstances are not what they were."
" Some are not--unhappily," he answered. "But others, pecuniary ones, have changed the other way. You are rich now."
"And do you think I would touch a stiver of the riches that are my dear Adam's?" she retorted, her eyes blazing. "Save what may be necessary to keep up Foxwood, and to--to-- No," she resumed, after the abrupt breaking off, "I hoard them for him."
Karl wondered whether trouble had a little touched her brain. Poor Adam could have no further use for riches in this world. Unless, indeed, in years to come, he should obtain what was called a ticket of leave. But Karl fancied that in a case like Adam's--Condemnation commuted--it was never given.
Mrs. Andinnian began asking the details of the giving-up of her former home. In answering, Karl happened to mention incidentally the death of their neighbour, Mr. Turner, and his own interview with Rose. The latter's name excited Mrs. Andinnian beyond all precedent: it brought on one of those frightful fits of passion that Karl had not seen of late years.
"I loathe her," she wildly said. "But for her wicked machinations, my darling son had not fallen into this dreadful fate that is worse than death. May my worst curses light upon the head of Rose Turner!"
Karl did what he could to soothe the storm he had unwittingly evoked. He told his mother that she would never, in all probability, be grieved with the sight of the girl again, for she was removing to the out-of-the-world district of Cumberland.