She put it down before she had finished the tirade of abuse; she did not look up, her face was scarlet.
Iden laughed.
"Horrid old wretch! Served him right!" said Mrs. Iden. "So glad you vexed him, dear!"
Amaryllis last night a wretch was this morning a heroine. The grandfather's letter had done this.
Iden never complained—never mentioned his father—but of course in his heart he bitterly felt the harsh neglect shown towards him and his wife and their child. He was a man who said the less the more he was moved; he gossiped freely with the men at the stile, or even with a hamlet old woman. Not a word ever dropped from him of his own difficulties—he kept his mind to himself. His wife knew nothing of his intentions—he was over-secretive, especially about money matters, in which he affected the most profound mystery, as if everyone in Coombe was not perfectly aware they could hardly get a pound of sugar on credit.
All the more bitterly he resented the manner in which Grandfather Iden treated him, giving away half-crowns, crown-pieces, shillings, and fourpenny bits to anyone who would flatter his peculiarities, leaving his own descendants to struggle daily with debt and insult.
Iden was in reality a very proud man, and the insults of his petty creditors fretted him.
He would have been glad if Amaryllis had become her grandfather's favourite; as the grandfather had thrown savage words at the girl, so much the more was added to the score against the grandfather.
Mrs. Iden hated the grandfather with every drop of Flamma blood in her veins—hated him above all for his pseudo-Flamma relationship, for old Iden had in his youth been connected with the Flammas in business—hated him for his veneration of the aristocratic and mediæval Pamments.
She was always impressing upon Amaryllis the necessity of cultivating her grandfather's goodwill, and always abusing him—contradicting herself in the most natural manner.