"Little hussy!" thought the Duchess, swelling with angry respectability at this remark.
"Thankful, darling!" said Chloe. The Duchess nearly fainted. "I am sick of them; and, besides, I look ever so much better without them."
At this point her Grace was on the point of forgetting her own somewhat equivocal situation, of bursting out of the mushroom-house, and taking to the open country, where her ears could not be defiled with such terrible revelations. Recollecting herself, however, just in time, she clapped her hands to her ears and endeavoured not to hear another word. In this effort she was successful, for when Chloe spoke again the words sounded but a blurred and distant murmur.
"I long for my darling petticoats," said Chloe, "and for my—my——"
"Your darling Huskinson," said Mrs. Verulam.
"Hush, Daisy!"
"Isn't it true?"
"I don't know. Perhaps, when I see him, I—but he may have gone back to America. He may—ah! ah! ah!"
She suddenly cried out at the very top of her voice, sprang up like one distraught, and grew as pale as a sheet of paper.