“This young lady will bear out what I have said, and the good people of the inn. There are plenty of Phœbe’s things about; for instance, that object on the sofa—you will hardly say it is yours, I presume? I saw besides, with my own eyes last night, an unparallelled scene of——”
Here the painter interrupted her by almost roaring out:
“Please to leave the room, Jane Anne!”
The girl, cowed, crept out. The painter continued:
“If this lady is your niece, Madam, you will hardly wish to discuss her reputation in public. Now, all I have to say to you is this, that this is the parlour of the inn, common to all, and the only available sitting-room. Your niece, Miss——,” he hesitated, he did not remember to have ever called Mrs. Elles by any name—“has been good enough to consent to share it with me during the time you name——”
“Nonsense! Now look here! it is no earthly use your beginning to tell me a pack of cock-and-bull stories like that!” struck in the old woman, and her overpowering emphasis actually silenced the man with the mere physical oppression of volume of sound and harsh quality of tone. The genius was no match for the virago.
“I have stayed here, in this very inn, from last night. I meant to see for myself—and I have seen! The Vicar’s wife—if there is such a thing as a vicar in this God-forgotten place!—who was scandalized by the goings on here, wrote to me and apprised me that Mrs. Elles—my niece—by marriage—perhaps you will have the brass to say that you did not know that she was a married lady?”
“I certainly did not know”—began the artist, almost mildly—for the sake of another woman, grown suddenly dearer to him than she had been, he thought to exercise diplomacy in dealing with the coarse virago who held that woman’s fate in her hands—but it was of no avail, since she interrupted him again, stridently, volubly, overwhelmingly, so that his forehead contracted, and he turned pale under the mere shock of the impact of the words she flung at him.
“Yes, my niece Phœbe ran away from her husband—my nephew—and came straight here to you, and has been living here with you for a clear month under an assumed name. That looks pretty bad, doesn’t it? So bad that Mortimer—my nephew—will have no difficulty in getting his divorce?”
“Divorce!” muttered Rivers, taken by surprise, and foolishly allowing her to see the shock her words had given him.