"Where's the child?" she burst out.

"She has not come home yet," replied Harriet, with composure. "I was waiting here for her."

"Come home from where? Where is she?"

"At Lady G.o.dolphin's Folly. But Mrs. Pain has never kept her so late as this before."

"She's _there_! With Mrs. Pain?" shrieked Margery.

"She has been there every day this week. Mrs Pain has either come or sent for her. Look there," added Harriet, pointing to a collection of toys in a corner of the nursery. "She has brought home all those things.

Mrs. Pain loads her with them."

Margery answered not a word. She blew out her candle, and went downstairs to the dining-room. Maria, her things never taken off, was sitting just as she had come in, apparently lost in thought. She rose up when Margery entered, and began untying her bonnet.

"Harriet says that the child's at Mrs. Pain's: that she has been there all the week," began Margery, without circ.u.mlocution.

"Yes," replied Maria. "I cannot think why she has not come home. Mrs.

Pain----"

"And you could let her go there, ma'am!" interrupted Margery's indignant voice, paying little heed or deference to what her mistress might be saying. "_There!_ If anybody had come and told it to me before this night, I would not have believed it."

"But, Margery, it has done her no harm. There's a pinafore or two torn, I believe, and that's the worst. Mrs. Pain has been exceedingly kind.

She has kept her dogs shut up all the week."

Margery's face was working ominously. It bore the sign of an approaching storm.

"Kind! She!" repeated Margery, almost beside herself. "Why, then, if it's come to this pa.s.s, you had better have your eyes opened, ma'am, if nothing else will stop the child's going there. Your child at Mrs.

Charlotte Pain's! Prior's Ash will talk more than it has talked before."

"What has Prior's Ash said?" asked Maria, an uncomfortable feeling stealing over her.

"It has wondered whether Mrs. George G.o.dolphin has been wholly blind or only partially so; that's what it has done, ma'am" returned Margery, quite forgetting herself in her irritation. "And the woman coming here continually with her bold face! I'd rather see Meta----"

Margery's eloquence was brought to a summary end. A noise in the hall was followed by the boisterous entrance of the ladies in question, Miss Meta and Mrs. Charlotte Pain. Charlotte--really she was wild at times--had brought Meta home on horseback. Late as it was, she had mounted her horse to give the child pleasure, had mounted the child on the saddle before her, and so they had cantered down, attended by a groom. Charlotte wore her habit, and held her whip in her hand. She came in pretending to beat an imaginary horse, for the delectation of Meta.

Meta was furnished with a boy's whip, a whistle at one end, a lash at the other. She was beating an imaginary horse too, varying the play with an occasional whistle. What with the noise, the laughing, the lashes, and the whistle, it was as if Bedlam had broken loose. To crown the whole, Meta's brown-holland dress was wofully torn, and the brim of her straw hat was almost separated from the crown.

Meta caught sight of Margery and flew to her. But not before Margery had made a sort of grab at the child. Clasping her in her arms, she held her there, as if she would protect her from some infection. To be clasped in arms, however, and thus deprived of the delights of whip-smacking and whistling, did not accord with Miss Meta's inclinations, and she struggled to get free.

"You'd best stop here and hide yourself, poor child!" cried Margery in a voice excessively pointed.

"It's not much," said Charlotte, supposing the remark applied to the damages. "The brim is only unsewn, and the blouse is an old one. She did it in swinging."

"Who's talking of that?" fiercely responded Margery to Mrs. Pain. "If folks had to hide their faces for nothing worse than torn clothes, it wouldn't be of much account."

Charlotte did not like the tone. "Perhaps you will wait until your opinion's asked for," said she, turning haughtily on Margery. There had been incipient warfare between those two for years: and they both were innately conscious of it.

A shrill whistle from Meta interrupted the contest. She had escaped and was standing in the middle of the room, her legs astride, her damaged hat set rakishly on the side of her head, her att.i.tude altogether not unlike that of a man standing to see a horse go through his paces. It was precisely what the young lady was imitating: she had been taken by Charlotte to the stable-yard that day, to witness the performance.

Clack, clack! "Lift your feet up, you lazy brute!" Clack, clack, clack!

"Mamma, I am making a horse canter."

Charlotte looked on with admiring ecstasy, and clapped her hands. Maria seemed bewildered: Margery stood with dilating eyes and open mouth.

There was little doubt that Miss Meta, under the able tuition of Mrs.

Pain, might become an exceedingly fast young lady in time.

"You have been teaching her that!" burst forth Margery to Mrs. Pain in her uncontrollable anger. "What else might you have been teaching her?

It's fit, it is, for you to be let have the companionship of Miss Meta G.o.dolphin!"

Charlotte laughed in her face defiantly--contemptuously--with a gleeful, merry accent. Margery, perhaps distrustful of what she might be further tempted to say herself, put an end to the scene by catching up Meta and forcibly carrying her off, in spite of rebellious kicks and screams. In her temper, she flung the whip to the other end of the hall as she pa.s.sed through it. "They'd make you into a boy, and worse, if they had their way. I wish Miss Janet had been here to-night!"

"What an idiotic old maid she is, that Margery!" exclaimed Charlotte, laughing still. "Good night. I can't stay. I shall come for Meta to-morrow."

"Not to-morrow," dissented Maria, feeling that the struggle with Margery would be too formidable. "I thank you very much for your kindness, Mrs.

Pain," she heartily added; "but now that Margery has returned, she will not like to part with Meta."

"As you will," said Charlotte, with a laugh. "Margery would not let her come, you think. Good night. Dormez bien."

Before the sound of the closing of the hall-door had ceased its echoes through the house, Margery was in the dining-room again, her face white with anger. Her mistress, a thing she very rarely did, ventured on a reproof.

"You forgot yourself, Margery, when you spoke just now to Mrs. Pain. I felt inclined to apologize to her for you."

This was the climax. "Forgot myself!" echoed Margery, her face growing whiter. "No, ma'am, it's because I did not forget myself that she's gone out of the house without her ears tingling. I should have made 'em tingle if I had spoke out. Not that some folk's ears can tingle," added Margery, amending her proposition. "Hers is of the number, so I should have spent my words for nothing. If Mr. George had spent _his_ words upon somebody else, it might be the better for us all now."

"Margery!"

"I can't help it, ma'am, I must have my say. Heaven knows I wouldn't have opened my mouth to you; I'd have kept it closed for ever, though I died for it--and it's not five minutes ago that I pretty well snapped Harriet's nose off for daring to give out hints and to bring up your name--but it's time you did know a little of what has been going on, to the scandal of Prior's Ash. Meta up at Lady G.o.dolphin's Folly with that woman!"

"Margery!" again interrupted her mistress. But Margery's words were as a torrent that bears down all before it.

"It has been the talk of the town; it has been the talk of the servants here; it has been the talk among the servants at Ashlydyat. If I thought you'd let the child go out with her in public again, I'd pray that I might first follow her to the grave in her little coffin."

Maria's face had turned as white as Margery's. She sat as a statue, gazing at the woman with eyes in which there shone a strange kind of fear.

"I--don't--know--what--it--is--you--mean," she said, the words coming out disjointedly.

"It means, ma'am, that you have lived with a mist before your eyes. You have thought my master a saint and a paragon, and he was neither the one nor the other. And now I hope you'll pardon me for saying to your face what others have been long saying behind your back."

She turned sharply off as she concluded, and quitted the room abruptly as she had entered it, leaving Maria motionless, her breath coming in gasps, and the dewdrops cold on her brow.

The substance of what Margery had spoken out so broadly had sometimes pa.s.sed through her mind as a dim shadow. But never to rest there.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A VISIT TO LORD AVERIL.