“Abandoned ways?” screamed the countess. “Is't you that speak of abandoned ways, ye shameless baggage? Faith, ye may be some judge of them. Ye fooled him into running off with you. 'Twas that began all this. Just as with your airs and simpers, and prettily-played innocences you fooled this other, here, into being your champion.”
“Madam, you insult me!” Hortensia was on her feet, eyes flashing, cheeks aflame.
“I am witness to that,” said Lord Ostermore, coming in through the side-entrance.
Mr. Caryll was the only one who had seen him approach. The earl's face that had wont to be so florid, was now pale and careworn, and he seemed to have lost flesh during the past month. He turned to her ladyship.
“Out on you!” he said testily, “to chide the poor child so!”
“Poor child!” sneered her ladyship, eyes raised to heaven to invoke its testimony to this absurdity. “Poor child.”
“Let there be an end to it, madam,” he said with attempted sternness. “It is unjust and unreasonable in you.”
“If it were that—which it is not—it would be but following the example that you set me. What are you but unreasonable and unjust—to treat your son as you are treating him?”
His lordship crimsoned. On the subject of his son he could be angry in earnest, even with her ladyship, as already we have seen.
“I have no son,” he declared, “there is a lewd, drunken, bullying profligate who bears my name, and who will be Lord Ostermore some day. I can't strip him of that. But I'll strip him of all else that's mine, God helping me. I beg, my lady, that you'll let me hear no more of this, I beg it. Lord Rotherby leaves my house to-day—now that Mr. Caryll is restored to health. Indeed, he has stayed longer than was necessary. He leaves to-day. He has my orders, and my servants have orders to see that he obeys them. I do not wish to see him again—never. Let him go, and let him be thankful—and be your ladyship thankful, too, since it seems you must have a kindness for him in spite of all he has done to disgrace and discredit us—that he goes not by way of Holborn Hill and Tyburn.”