Here the reader who has visited the Sandwich Islands may pause to congratulate himself. Remembering the crater of Mauna Loa, he will have a more vivid idea of Miss Garr’s feelings than anything but that molten sea of lava could possibly suggest. Sophia jumped indignantly to her feet, and poured a tide of epithets, so seething-hot, over the head of the astonished Archibald, that for a moment he succumbed before it, blank and still as some patriarchal porpoise, lava-cooked and cast upon the beach of Hawaii.
“‘YOU WRETCH!’”
“You wretch!” was the comparatively calm peroration of Miss Garr, “you—you horrid wretch! I have a mind to sue you for slander. How dare you put such a stigma on my character when you know, or ought to know, that George Lang is the one that is insane!”
“Oh, ah! George Lang, my employer?” exclaimed Mr. Beanson, coming to life. “That’s the gentleman you would prosecute. Well, now!”
To the intense astonishment of Archibald an increasing bitterness of manner succeeded, and he said, “If you are not insane, madam, you are certainly in your dotage. Why, look at this desk, here! Every one of these papers is a deed made out by order of the gentleman you would rob. Go along with your breach of promise! The court would send you to an asylum as sure as guns!”
Mr. Beanson’s face grew brighter as his indignation grew, and his entire head was girt about with an unwonted appearance of youth. Sophia’s rough handling, like sandpaper upon an antique bust, had rubbed some of the yellow mould away—had lifted that mysterious veil woven by the semblance of years, and had opened up to her eyes and ours, the perfect glories of Mr. Beanson’s Golden Age.
“You came here, no doubt, madam,” continued Archibald, with no such interruption as the foregoing paragraph; “in fact, I feel sure, madam, you came here to prevail on me to enter into a plot against my only present employer, and may be (here Mr. Beanson was very bitter in the curl of his lip and his general tone), may be?—no, I am sure, too, that you would attempt to marry me at last, as a meet punishment for being your accomplice. Oh! I see it in your eye, madam; you need not deny it!”
Miss Garr, at one time or another, since she had read Mr. Beanson’s name on his card, might have thought vaguely of “prospecting” him for a husband, in case of the failure of all other claims; but to do her justice, it was only ineffable rage that Archibald saw in her eye, as he repeated—though Sophia had not attempted to speak—“You need not deny it, for I tell you I see it in your eye! and as for Mr. Lang, I am doing his notary business, and a great deal of it, too, especially of late. He is selling hosts of property—hosts of property, madam, in the name and with the written consent of the Claytons. Why, the very heaviest sale is to be made to-day. Now what does this mutual confidence presuppose? Madam,” said Mr. Beanson, rising and assuming an air of mock politeness, “if you were as sure that you are sane, as I am that he is going to marry the daughter of Mrs. Clayton, you would not have taken up so much of my valuable time from Mr. Lang’s business. But, madam, this is the door,” concluded Mr. Beanson with an urbane wave of the hand, as he resumed his seat and began silently to arrange the papers before him.
Miss Sophia, white with rage, did not stir or speak.