“You think—yes, you do!” Lady Vermuyden retorted with fierce energy—“you think that I have treated her so ill that I have no right to see her! That I cannot care to see her! But you do not know how I was tried! How I was suspected, how I was watched! What wrongs I suffered! And—and I never meant to hide her for good. When I died, she would have come home. And I had a plan too—but never mind that—to right her without Vermuyden’s knowledge and in his teeth. I saw her on a coach one day along with—what is it?”
“There is someone coming,” Lady Lansdowne said hurriedly. Her ladyship indeed was in a state of great apprehension. She knew that at any moment she might be found, perhaps by Sir Robert: and the thought of the scene which would follow—aware as she was of the exasperation of his feelings—appalled her. She tried to temporise. “Another time,” she said. “I think someone is coming now. See me another time and I will do what I can.”
“No!” the other broke in, her face flushing with sudden anger. “See you, Louisa? What do I care for seeing you? It is my girl I wish to see, that I’m come to see, that I’m going to see! I’m her mother, fetch her to me! I have a right to see her, and I will see her! I demand her! If you do not go for her——”
“Sybil! Sybil!” Lady Lansdowne cried, thoroughly alarmed by her friend’s violence. “For Heaven’s sake be calm!”
“Calm?” Lady Vermuyden answered. “Do you cease to dictate to me, and do as I bid you! Go, and fetch her, or I will go myself and claim her before all his friends. He has no heart. He never had a heart! It’s sawdust,” with a hysterical laugh. “But he has pride and I’ll trample on it! I’ll tread it in the mud—if you don’t fetch her! Are you going, Miss Gravity? We used to call you Miss Gravity, I remember. You were always,” with a faint sneer, “a bit of a prude, my dear!”
Miss Gravity! What long-forgotten trifles, what thoughts of youth the nickname brought back to Lady Lansdowne’s recollection. What wars of maidens’ wits, and half-owned jealousies, and light resentments, and sunny days of pique and pleasure! Her heart, never anything but soft, under the mask of her great-lady’s manner, waxed sore and pitiful. Yet how was she to do the other’s bidding? How could she betray Sir Robert’s confidence? How——
Someone was coming—really coming this time. She looked round.
“I’ll give you five minutes!” Lady Sybil whispered. “Five minutes, Louisa! Remember!”
And when Lady Lansdowne turned again to her, she had vanished among the laurels.