“Impossible! I have been in the room myself since four o’clock, and she was sleeping then.”
“That was me, ma’am; and I was not asleep. I heard you come in—I never went to sleep all night. I’d have given anything, ma’am, if I might have told you. I never was so miserable in all my life—and poor Miss Bessie, she were a-crying dreadful.”
“Where is she gone?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Who is she gone with?”
“That gentleman as is so sweet on her.”
“You don’t mean Mr. Harcourt?”
“Lor’! no, ma’am; that other what she came back from church to meet yesterday.”
Utterly bewildered, Heather stood in the middle of the room, confounded and almost stupified.
Had any one come to her and said Bessie was dead, she could not have felt more shocked—more grieved. Under her eyes this thing had been going on—this deception from day to day, and from week to week—and she had never even suspected its existence. Her very servant had been cognisant of it; this girl, this false, cheating, untruthful Prissy Dobbin, had been persuaded by Bessie to conceal the mischief until it was too late to repair it. And Bessie, too, that bright, gay, affectionate creature, was but a hypocrite and a deceiver! Mrs. Dudley felt this to be the last drop in the cup, and, covering her face, wept bitterly.