His voice broke the spell which had lain upon them all.
“I don’t see what there is to think,” said Letitia. “What did you expect? Sense from a woman who is as mad as a March hare.”
“It ill becomes you, Tisch,” said Mrs. Hill, who had been gasping for an opportunity, “it ill becomes you, who drove her to it, to speak of my Mary in that way.”
Mrs. John Parke gave a stare in the direction of the vicar’s wife, and then, turning to the two gentlemen, shrugged her shoulders a little and elevated her eyebrows.
“It is in the family,” she said.
Mr. Blotting, like most other men, feared a passage of arms between the two ladies, so he hastened to put himself in the breach.
“In ordinary circumstances,” he said, “a statement of this kind from a mother would be considered conclusive. If she said, ‘This child is not mine,’ there would not be another word to say.”
“But, I beg—I beg,” said the vicar, wagging his white beard, and see-sawing with his large hand. “Nothing of the sort—nothing of the sort! Lady Frogmore entertains a hallucination. Such a thing has happened to many at a delicate time of life. Where is Dr. Brown? he will tell you. Why, the boy, sir, the boy—is undoubted—Why, my wife was there!”
“I am ready,” said Mrs. Hill, “to be examined before any court in England. I was present from the moment things began. Her mother! Of course, I was with her—I never left her. Why, it was I who received the child—I saw him born. I——”
“Spare us, please, the details. These gentlemen are not old women,” said Letitia. “We, who are most concerned, don’t question the fact. We may have our own opinion; we may think that of all the base, foul designs, to marry an old doting fool of a——”