“Oh, yes, I’ve heard,” said Batty, “and I think it’s time she should turn up, the only one of your family as has ever come near my girl. You’re welcome, my dear, better late than never; though I think, considering how kind the Eastwoods have been to you, that you might have come a little sooner to show Mrs. Frederick some respect.”
Innocent listened, wondering, to this address, gazing at the man whom she had a confused recollection of having seen before. All that she comprehended now was, more or less, that he was scolding her, though about what she could not tell. He was a kind of man totally unknown to Innocent—his thick figure, his coarse air, his loud voice and red hands, surprised, without so much revolting her as they might have done, had her organization been more perfect. She was frightened, but made an effort of politeness to conceal it.
“Is she better?” she asked, not knowing what to say.
“You’ll see what she’ll say to you when she sees you,” said Batty to Frederick with a chuckle, “and I don’t blame her, poor girl. If this is what you call visiting your wife when she’s poorly, things have changed since my day. It’s close on five, and nearly time for dinner, and you’ve been out since the moment you swallowed your lunch.”
“I have been with my little cousin here, and Miss Vane of the High Lodge, who is coming to call on Amanda on Monday,” said Frederick. “In the meantime I took the liberty of inviting my cousin to stay with my wife for a couple of nights. I hope it is practicable——”
“Oh, practicable enough,” said Batty, with a laugh. “I’m not one of those as leaves themselves without a room to give to a friend. Plenty of accommodation here for as many as you like to bring—and the more the merrier, if they’re the right sort. Glad to see you, Miss Innocent. Training up for your trade, eh?—at that old nunnery out there. Lord, to see that old Lady Abbess in my house will be a sight! ’Manda will tackle her, I’ll be bound. Walk up, walk up-stairs, Eastwood will show you the way; and he’s sure of a warm welcome, he is. Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Batty stood in the passage holding his sides, while Frederick, with disgust on every line of his fine features, strode up-stairs. Innocent followed her cousin wondering. What the man meant, whether he was merry, or angry, or simply the most disagreeable strange man she had ever seen, she could not make out. She remembered vaguely what Frederick had told her so lately—what she had heard repeated on all sides at The Elms—that Frederick’s wife was of “another class.” And the stairs were narrow, the passage contracted, the maid who had opened the door not like the maids at The Elms; and Batty’s dress, and appearance, and manner of speech very different from anything Innocent had ever known before. This was what it meant, then, to be of “another class.” Thus she followed with some new speculations rising in her passive brain, into the presence of Frederick’s wife.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE MOMENT OF FATE.
Frederick led Innocent to the door of a bedroom which opened from a little gallery up-stairs. He paused there before he opened it.
“If we find Amanda in an excitable state, you must not mind it,” he said; “you must not be frightened. Forgive her because she is ill. It is her way——”