“I speak for the sake of peace,” she said, coldly; “that need not stand between us now. We go away in a week. The things I mean to remove will be gone within a month. What I wish you to know is, that you may make arrangements for your removal as soon as you please.”
“Oh, for our removal! yes, yes,” he said, impatiently; “there is no hurry about that: if that was all one had to think of—”
“I am sorry that you should have other things to think of. To me it seems very important,” Mrs. Russell Penton said.
“Ah! you have nobody but yourself to be concerned about,” he said. But then he met his wife’s look of warning, and added no more.
Russell Penton lingered a little behind the rest. “Let me speak a word to you,” he said, detaining Lady Penton; and her heart, which had begun to beat feebly as an end approached to this excitement, leaped up again with an energy which made her sick and faint. Could he know something about Walter? might he have some news to tell her? Her face flushed, and then became the color of ashes, a change of which he was wonderingly aware, though without a notion as to why it was, “You are alarmed,” he said, “about—”
“No, no!” she interrupted, faintly; “not alarmed. Oh, no, you must not think so—not frightened at all,” but with fear pale and terrible, and suspense which was desperate, in every line of her countenance.
Russell Penton himself grew frightened too. “There is nothing to alarm you,” he said, “about little Mab.”
“Oh!” the breath which had almost failed her came back. A sudden change came over her face; she smiled, though her smile was ghastly. “About—Mab?” she said.
“It is alarming, the way in which she flings herself upon you; but you must let me explain. I see that you think her just a little girl like any other, and her proposal to come and stay with you altogether is enough to make even the most generous pause. But that is not what she means, Lady Penton. She is very rich; she is a little heiress.”
The words did not seem to convey much significance to Lady Penton’s bewildered soul. “A little heiress,” she repeated, vaguely, as if that information threw no light upon the matter. Was she stupid? he asked himself, or ridiculously disinterested, altogether unlike the other women who have sons? “Very rich—really with a great fortune—but no home. She is too young to live by herself. She has never developed the domestic affections before. I should like very well to keep her, but it would be a burden on Alicia. Will you think it over? She has evidently set her heart on you, and if would do her so much good to be with people she cared for. There would of course be a very good allowance, if you will let me say so. Do think it over.”