“I wish to the Lord you had prudence; old Vellum's cocking his lugs.”
“Oh, I don't care if he is; you make me desperate, Sim.” Her needles thrust like poignards, her bosom heaved. “You may deny it if you like, but who pressed me to urge him on to take Drim-darroch? Who said it might be so happy a home for us when—when—my goodman there—when I was free?”
“Heavens! what a hangman's notion!” thought the Chamberlain to himself, with a swift side glance at this termagant, and a single thought of calm Olivia.
“You have nothing to say to that, Sim, I see. It's just too late in the day for you to be virtuous, laddie; your Kate knows you and she likes you better as you are than as you think you would like to be. We were so happy, Sim, we were so happy!” A tear dropped on her lap.
“Now heaven forgive me for my infernal folly!” cried out the soul of Sim MacTaggart; but never a word did he say aloud.
Count Victor, at the other end of the room, listening to Petullo upon wines he was supposed to sell and whereof Petullo was supposed to be a connoisseur, though as a fact his honest taste was buttermilk—Count Victor became interested in the other pair. He saw what it took younger eyes, and a different experience from those of the husband, to observe.
“Cognac,”—this to M. le Connoisseur with the rheumy eye—“but yes, it is good; your taste in that must be a national affair, is it not? Our best, the La Rochelle, has the name of a Scot—I think of Fife—upon the cask;” but to himself, with a glance again at the tragic comedy in the corner of the couch, “Fi donc! Mungo had reason; my gentleman of the dark eye is suspiciously like cavalière servante.”
The Chamberlain began to speak fast upon topics of no moment, dreading the consequence of this surrender on the woman's part: she heard nothing as she thrust furiously and blindly with her needles, her eyes suffused with tears courageously restrained. At last she checked him.
“All that means, Sim, that it's true about the girl,” said she. “I tried to think it was a lie when I heard it, but now you compel me to believe you are a brute. You are a brute, Sim, do you hear that? Oh God! oh God! that ever I saw you! That ever I believed you! What is wrong with me, Sim? tell me, Sim! What is wrong with me? Am I different in any way from what I was last spring? Surely I'm not so old as all that; not a grey hair in my head, not a wrinkle on my face. I could keep like that for twenty years yet, just for love of Sim MacTaggart. Sim, say something, for the love of Heaven! Say it's a lie. Laugh at the story, Sim! Oh, Sim! Sim!”
The knitting needles clicked upon each other in her trembling hands, like fairy castanets.