"Oh, I've no patience, Charles!—it's the letter of a vulgar, hard-hearted fellow," sobbed Mrs. Aubrey.
"Yes—they are wretches!—cruel harpies!" quoth Kate, passionately—"they know that you have almost beggared yourself to pay off by far the greater part of their abominable bill; and that you are slaving day and night to enable you to"——here her agitation was so excessive as to prevent her uttering another word.
"I must write and tell them," said Aubrey, calmly but with a countenance laden with gloom—"it is all I can do—that if they will have patience with me, I will pay them all."
"Oh, they'll put you in prison, Charles, directly"—said Kate, almost frantically; and rising, she threw herself into his arms, and kissed him with a sort of frenzied energy. "We're very miserable, Charles—are we not? It's hard to bear indeed," she continued, gazing with agonizing intensity on his troubled features. Mrs. Aubrey wept in silence.
"Are you giving way, my brave Kate, beneath this sudden and momentary gust on the midnight sea of our trouble?" inquired her brother, proudly but kindly gazing at her, and with his hand gently pushing from her pale cheeks her disordered hair.
"Human nature, Charles, must not be tried too far—look at Agnes, and the darling little loves"——
"I am not likely to consult their interests, Kate, by yielding to unmanly emotion—am I, sweet Agnes?" She made him no reply, but shook her head, sobbing bitterly.
"Pray what do you think, Charles, of your friend Mr. Gammon, now?" inquired Kate, suddenly and scornfully. "Oh, the smooth-tongued villain! I've always hated him!"
"I must say there's something about his eye that is anything but pleasing," said Mrs. Aubrey; "and so I thought when I saw him at York for a moment."