"Am I in time? Am I too late?"
"In time for what? Too late for what?"
"Has he—has he done anything—anything irrevocable? Is he—is he? I suppose that horrid woman has got hold of him? I suppose that is why you sent for me!"
By this time she is safely landed at his side, which is possibly the reason why he at once lets fall her hand.
"I am not aware that there is any 'horrid woman' in the case."
"Oh, what does it matter what I call her?" cries the mother, fast becoming frantic at the delay in answering her passionate questions. "I will call her what you please; you know perfectly whom I mean; she has got hold of him, I suppose. I always knew she would! Did not I tell you so? but is it too late? is there no way of getting him off?"
Now that Burgoyne has a nearer view of Mrs. Byng, he sees that she has a more fagged and travel-worn air than he had at first supposed, and her dusty eyes are fastened upon him with such a hunger of interrogation, that, angered and jarred as he is by her tone, he has not the heart any longer to keep her in suspense.
"If you are alluding to Miss Le Marchant, I may as well tell you at once that she has left Florence."
"Left Florence! Do you mean to say that she has run away with someone else?"
She puts the question in all good faith, her lively imagination having easily made the not very wide jump from the fact already established in her own mind of Elizabeth being an adventuress, to the not much more difficult one to swallow, of her having devoured another fils de famille, as well as Mrs. Byng's own.