“Where are we to go, sir, for the night? If you’ll please to show us, sir. I’m a stranger here.”
“Oh! This is too much!” the Honourable Bob cried, finding himself on a sudden a family man. “Go? I don’t care if you go to——” But there he paused. He put the temptation to tell them to go to blazes from him. After all, they were Mary’s servants. “Oh, very well! Very well!” he resumed, fuming. “There, get in! Get in!” indicating the hackney-coach. “And do you,” he continued, turning to Thomas, “tell him to drive to the White Lion. Was there ever? That old woman’s a neat artist, if ever I saw one!”
And a moment later Flixton trundled off, boxed in with the mature maid, and vowing to himself that in all his life he had never been so diddled before.
Meanwhile, within doors—for farce and tragedy are never far apart—Mary, with her furs loosened, but not removed, was resisting all Miss Sibson’s efforts to restrain her. “I must go to her!” she said with painful persistence. “I must go to her at once, if you please, Miss Sibson. Where is she?”
“She is not here,” Miss Sibson said, plump and plain.
“Not here!” Mary cried, springing from the chair into which Miss Sibson had compelled her. “Not here!”
“No. Not in this house.”
“Then why—why did she tell me to come here?” Mary cried dumbfounded.
“Her ladyship is next door. No, my dear!” And Miss Sibson interposed her ample form between Mary and the door. “You cannot go to her until you have eaten and drunk. She does not expect you, and there is no need of such haste. She may live a fortnight, three weeks, a month even! And she must not, my dear, see you with that sad face.”
Mary gave way at that. She sat down and burst into tears.