“Tell him to come in.”
Thanks to the etiquette of the servants’ hall—which did not permit Joseph to present himself, voluntarily, in the regions above the drawing-room, without being first represented by an ambassadress—attention was now diverted from the children. Zo folded her letter, enclosed it in the envelope, and hid it in her pocket.
Joseph appeared. “I beg your pardon, sir, I don’t quite know whether I ought to disturb my mistress. Mr. Le Frank has called, and asked if he can see her.”
Mr. Gallilee consulted the parlour-maid. “Was your mistress asleep when I sent you to her?”
“No, sir. She told me to bring her a cup of tea.”
On those rare former occasions, when Mrs. Gallilee had been ill, her attentive husband never left it to the servants to consult her wishes. That time had gone by for ever.
“Tell your mistress, Joseph, that Mr. Le Frank is here.”
CHAPTER XLVII.
The slander on which Mrs. Gallilee had reckoned, as a means of separating Ovid and Carmina, was now a slander refuted by unanswerable proof. And the man whose exertions had achieved this result, was her own lawyer—the agent whom she had designed to employ, in asserting that claim of the guardian over the ward which Teresa had defied.