‘Did you speak?’ said Mrs. Doncastle, looking with astonishment at the butler.
‘Chickerel, what’s the matter—are you ill?’ said Mr. Doncastle simultaneously. ‘Was it you who said that?’
‘I did, sir,’ said Chickerel in a husky voice, scarcely above a whisper. ‘I could not help it.’
‘Why?’
‘She is my daughter, and it shall be known at once!’
‘Who is your daughter?’
He paused a few moments nervously. ‘Mrs. Petherwin,’ he said.
Upon this announcement Neigh looked at poor Chickerel as if he saw through him into the wall. Mrs. Doncastle uttered a faint exclamation and leant back in her chair: the bare possibility of the truth of Chickerel’s claims to such paternity shook her to pieces when she viewed her intimacies with Ethelberta during the past season—the court she had paid her, the arrangements she had entered into to please her; above all, the dinner-party which she had contrived and carried out solely to gratify Lord Mountclere and bring him into personal communication with the general favourite; thus making herself probably the chief though unconscious instrument in promoting a match by which her butler was to become father-in-law to a peer she delighted to honour. The crowd of perceptions almost took away her life; she closed her eyes in a white shiver.
‘Do you mean to say that the lady who sat here at dinner at the same time that Lord Mountclere was present, is your daughter?’ asked Doncastle.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Chickerel respectfully.