'To Frank Wardroper? In what language? I speak several.'
'I cannot tell what tongue it was, but it was not English.'
'Oh! I did say something in French, I remember. But of course you know French?'
'I do not. You know that I do not.'
'Every lady is familiar——'
'I was not brought up as a lady.'
Mrs. Tomkin-Jones was confounded, but she recovered herself. 'No, my dear child, I know you were left in charge of an ignorant person who neglected——'
'I was sent to a Dame's school, but I did not learn French there. That matters not. You were, I think, alluding in French to my—to my—Mrs. Marley. You used some words; that was before we entered the shop. If they concerned me I do not care, but if they reflected on her, I do care. I care with my whole heart and soul, and'—the tears were near filling her eyes—'I have heard you call her a person, a creature, a thing, and what you said about her in French I know not, but it was not civil or you would not have spoken it in a strange tongue. What did you say?'
'I really do not recall.'
'It does not matter. But, madam, consider this. I will not have Mrs. Marley spoken of, in English or in French, in a way that is not respectful. None but I know what she has been to me, nor how that there is no one in the world to fight her battles but myself. No one but I know how good she is, how true, how honest, how loving; those who snap and sneer at her are not worthy to buckle her shoes. A word spoken against her, in ridicule or in disparagement, I will not bear, I cannot bear. I cannot tell what I might say or do if I heard it again. But of this I am certain, I will throw all the advantages away from me which I might gain by being here rather than hear it again. I would rather leave the house and go back to her once more.'