"Ah, yes—so I was. Well, my dear, she controlled herself by an admirable effort, and wrote exactly what I told her. You will excuse a mother's partiality, I am sure—but I think I never saw her look so lovely—so mournfully lovely, I should say—as when she was writing those last lines to the man who had so basely trifled with her. The tears came into my eyes as I looked at her sweet pale cheeks; and I thought to myself——"
("Nurse! which of the children was sick, last time, after eating onion sauce?")
He had come back again!—the monster had come back again, from the very threshold of the garden gate, to shout that unwarrantably atrocious question in at his nursery window!
Lady Malkinshaw bounced off her chair at the first note of his horrible voice, and changed towards me instantly—as if it had been my fault!—in the most alarming and unexpected manner. Her ladyship's face became awfully red; her ladyship's head trembled excessively; her ladyship's eyes looked straight into mine with an indescribable fierceness.
"Why am I thus insulted?" inquired Lady Malkinshaw, with a slow and dignified sternness which froze the blood in my veins. "What do you mean by it?" continued her ladyship, with a sudden rapidity of utterance that quite took my breath away.
Before I could remonstrate with my friend for visiting her natural irritation on poor innocent me: before I could declare that I had seen the major actually open his garden gate to go away, the provoking brute's voice burst in on us again.
"Ha! yes!" we heard him growl to himself, in a kind of shameless domestic soliloquy. "Yes, yes, yes—Sophy was sick, to be sure. Curious. All Mrs. Namby's step-children have weak chests and strong stomachs. All Mrs. Namby's own children have weak stomachs and strong chests. I have a strong stomach and a strong chest.—Pamby!"
"I consider this," continued Lady Malkinshaw, literally glaring at me, in the fulness of her indiscriminate exasperation—"I consider this to be unwarrantable and unladylike. I beg to know——"
"Where's Bill?" burst in the major, from below, before her ladyship could add another word. "Matilda! Nurse! Pamby! where's Bill? I didn't bid Bill good-bye—hold him up at the window, one of you!"
"My dear Lady Malkinshaw," I remonstrated, "why blame me? What have I done?"