"Some child that Mrs. Rushmere adopted years ago. Polly told me, that it was for love of her that Mr. Gilbert ran away and listed for a soldier, because the old man would not give his consent, and this Dorothy refused to marry him."
Mrs. Gilbert's misery was now complete. She sat down in a chair, with her fair hair all loose about her shoulders, staring at the incendiary in a wild vacant manner. At this unfortunate moment, Gilbert entered the room. Hurrying up to his wife, he demanded the cause of her distress.
"Are you a man, Gilbert Rushmere?" she said, slowing rising and confronting him, "to allow your wife to be insulted by your father's menials?"
"How, and in what manner, Sophy?" She repeated the tale of her wrongs as Martha had told them. Gilbert's eye flashed—he turned them angrily upon Martha, who was secretly enjoying the mischief she had made.
"Go to your bed, girl, and let me never hear any of this vile tattling again. It is such stories, carried from one to the other, that ruin the peace of families."
Martha knew that the arrows she had launched had struck home, and left the room without a word in her defence.
Gilbert turned sorrowfully to his wife, who was crying violently.
"Sophy, if you will encourage that girl in bringing you tales about other members of the family, how can we ever live in peace? You know the imperative necessity of curbing your temper, until I am able in some way to provide a living for you. Why will you frustrate all my plans for your comfort by this childish folly?"
"How dare you talk to me, sir, in that strain; when you had the dastardly cruelty of bringing me down here to live in the same house as your former mistress?" She rose and stood before him, with her hand raised in a menacing attitude, and a smile of scorn writhing her lip.
"Good heavens! Sophia, what do you mean?"