“They have not been teasing me,” said Aunt Agatha; “they have been very good, and I have been sitting here for a long time talking to Nelly. I wanted her to tell me something about my dear child, Mary’s own sister—Mrs. Percival, you know.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Askell, making a troubled pause,—“and I hope to goodness you did not tell Miss Seton anything that was unpleasant,” she said sharply, turning to Nelly. “You must not mind anything she said,” the foolish little woman added; “she was only a child and she did not know. You should have asked me.”
“What could there be that was not pleasant?” cried Aunt Agatha. “If there is anything unpleasant that can be said about my Winnie, that is precisely what I ought to hear.”
“Mamma!” cried Nelly, in what was intended to be a whisper of warning, though her anxiety made it shrill and audible. But Emma was not a woman to be kept back.
“Goodness, child, you have pulled my dress out of the gathers,” she said. “Do you think I don’t know what I am talking about? When I say unpleasant, I am sure I don’t mean anything serious; I mean only, you know, that—— and then her husband is such a man—I am sure I don’t wonder at it, for my part.”
“What is it your mamma does not wonder at, Nelly?” said Aunt Agatha, who had turned white and cold, and leaned back all feeble and broken upon the old tree.
“Her husband neglected her shamefully,” said Emma; “it was a great sin for her friends to let her marry him; I am sure Mrs. Ochterlony knew what a dreadful character he had. And, poor thing, when she found herself so deserted—— Askell would never let me see much of her, and I had always such wretched health; but I always stood up for Mrs. Percival. She was young, and she had nobody to stand by her——”
“Oh, mamma,” cried Nelly, “don’t you see what you are doing? I think she is going to faint—and it will be all our fault.”
“Oh, no; I am not going to faint,” said Aunt Agatha, feebly; but when she laid back her head upon Nelly’s shoulder, who had come to support her, and closed her eyes, she was like death, so pale did she look and ghastly; and then Mrs. Askell in her turn took fright.
“Goodness gracious! run and get some water, Will,” she cried to Wilfrid, who had rejoined them. “I am sure there was nothing in what I said to make anybody faint. She was talked about a little, that was all—there was no harm in it. We have all been talked about, sometime or other. Why, fancy what a talk there was about our Madonna, her very self.”