Who to?”
“A young lady I love.”
“Her name?”
“Miss Arabella Bruce.”
“Where does she live?”
“Portman Square.”
“I'll stop that marriage.”
“How?” asked Richard, eagerly.
“I don't know; that I'll think over. But he shall not marry her—never!”
Bassett sat and looked up with almost as much awe as complacency at the fury he had evoked; for this woman was really at times a poetic impersonation of that fiery passion she was so apt to indulge. She stood before him, her cheek pale, her eyes glittering and roving savagely, and her nostrils literally expanding, while her tall body quivered with wrath, and her clinched knuckles pattered on the table.
“He shall not marry her. I'll kill him first!”
CHAPTER III.
RICHARD BASSETT eagerly offered his services to break off the obnoxious match. But Miss Somerset was beginning to be mortified at having shown so much passion before a stranger.
“What have you to do with it?” said she, sharply.
“Everything. I love Miss Bruce.”
“Oh, yes; I forgot that. Anything else? There is, now. I see it in your
eye. What is it?”
“Sir Charles's estates are mine by right, and they will return to my
line if he does not marry and have issue.”
“Oh, I see. That is so like a man. It's always love, and something more important, with you. Well, give me your address. I'll write if I want you.”
“Highly flattered,” said Bassett, ironically-wrote his address and left her.
Miss Somerset then sat down and wrote:
“DEAR SIR CHARLES—please call here, I want to speak to you.
yours respecfuly,
“RHODA SOMERSET.”
Sir Charles obeyed this missive, and the lady received him with a gracious and smiling manner, all put on and catlike. She talked with him of indifferent things for more than an hour, still watching to see if he would tell her of his own accord.
When she was quite sure he would not, she said,
“Do you know there's a ridiculous report about that you are going to be married?”
“Indeed!”
“They even tell her name—Miss Bruce. Do you know the girl?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Very.”
“Modest?”
“As an angel.”
“And are you going to marry her?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are a villain.”
“The deuce I am!”
“You are, to abandon a woman who has sacrificed all for you.”
Sir Charles looked puzzled, and then smiled; but was too polite to give his thoughts vent. Nor was it necessary; Miss Somerset, whose brave eyes never left the person she was speaking to, fired up at the smile alone, and she burst into a torrent of remonstrance, not to say vituperation. Sir Charles endeavored once or twice to stop it, but it was not to be stopped; so at last he quietly took up his hat, to go.
He was arrested at the door by a rustle and a fall. He turned round, and there was Miss Somerset lying on her back, grinding her white teeth and clutching the air.
He ran to the bell and rang it violently, then knelt down and did his best to keep her from hurting herself; but, as generally happens in these cases, his interference made her more violent. He had hard work to keep her from battering her head against the floor, and her arms worked like windmills.
Hearing the bell tugged so violently, a pretty page ran headlong into the room—saw—and; without an instant's diminution of speed, described a curve, and ran headlong out, screaming “Polly! Polly!”
The next moment the housekeeper, an elderly woman, trotted in at the door, saw her mistress's condition, and stood stock-still, calling, “Polly,” but with the most perfect tranquillity the mind can conceive.
In ran a strapping house-maid, with black eyes and brown arms, went down on her knees, and said, firmly though respectfully, “Give her me, sir.”
She got behind her struggling mistress, pulled her up into her own lap, and pinned her by the wrists with a vigorous grasp.
The lady struggled, and ground her teeth audibly, and flung her arms abroad. The maid applied all her rustic strength and harder muscle to hold her within bounds. The four arms went to and fro in a magnificent struggle, and neither could the maid hold the mistress still, nor the mistress shake off the maid's grasp, nor strike anything to hurt herself.
Sir Charles, thrust out of the play looked on with pity and anxiety, and the little page at the door—combining art and nature—stuck stock-still in a military attitude, and blubbered aloud.
As for the housekeeper, she remained in the middle of the room with folded arms, and looked down on the struggle with a singular expression of countenance. There was no agitation whatever, but a sort of thoughtful examination, half cynical, half admiring.
However, as soon as the boy's sobs reached her ear she wakened up, and said, tenderly, “What is the child crying for? Run and get a basin of water, and fling it all over her; that will bring her to in a minute.”
The page departed swiftly on this benevolent errand.
Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and ceased to struggle.
Next she stared in all their faces, and seemed to return to consciousness.
Next she spoke, but very feebly. “Help me up,” she sighed.
Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous change. The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and limp as a wet towel—a woman of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her gingerly on the sofa.
Now the page ran in hastily with the water. Up jumps the poor
