The tutor was all complacence.  ’It proves that your ladyship’s stratagem,’ he said, ‘was to the point last night.’

‘Oh, Dunborough will live to thank me for that!’ she answered.  ’Gadzooks, he will!  It is first come first served with these madams.  This will open his eyes if anything will.’

‘Still—­it is to be hoped she will leave before he returns,’ Mr. Thomasson said, with a slight shiver of anticipation.  He knew Mr. Dunborough’s temper.

‘Maybe,’ my lady answered.  ‘But even if she does not—­’ There she broke of, and stood peering through the window.  And suddenly, ‘Lord’s sake!’ she shrieked, ‘what is this?’

The fury of her tone, no less than the expletive—­which we have ventured to soften—­startled Mr. Thomasson to his feet.  Approaching the window in trepidation—­for her ladyship’s wrath was impartial, and as often alighted on the wrong head as the right—­the tutor saw that she had dropped her quizzing-glass, and was striving with shaking hands—­but without averting her eyes from the scene outside—­to recover and readjust it.  Curious as well as alarmed, he drew up to her, and, looking over her shoulder, discerned the seat and Julia; and, alas! seated on the bench beside Julia, not Sir George Soane, as my lady’s indifferent sight, prompted by her wishes, had persuaded her, but Mr. Dunborough!

The tutor gasped.  ‘Oh, dear!’ he said, looking round, as if for a way of retreat.  ‘This is—­this is most unfortunate.’

My lady in her wrath did not heed him.  Shaking her fist at her unconscious son, ‘You rascal!’ she cried.  ’You paltry, impudent fellow!  You would do it before my eyes, would you?  Oh, I would like to have the brooming of you!  And that minx!  Go down you,’ she continued, turning fiercely on the trembling, wretched Thomasson—­’go down this instant, sir, and—­and interrupt them!  Don’t stand gaping there, but down to them, booby, without the loss of a moment!  And bring him up before the word is said.  Bring him up, do you hear?’

‘Bring him up?’ said Mr. Thomasson, his breath coming quickly.  ‘I?’

‘Yes, you!  Who else?’

‘I—­I—­but, my dear lady, he is—­he can be very violent,’ the unhappy tutor faltered, his teeth chattering, and his cheek flabby with fright.  ’I have known him—­and perhaps it would be better, considering my sacred office, to—­to—­’

‘To what, craven?’ her ladyship cried furiously.

‘To leave him awhile—­I mean to leave him and presently—­’

Lady Dunborough’s comment was a swinging blow, which the tutor hardly avoided by springing back.  Unfortunately this placed her ladyship between him and the door; and it is not likely that he would have escaped her cane a second time, if his wits, and a slice of good fortune, had not come to his assistance.  In the midst of his palpitating ‘There, there, my lady!  My dear good lady!’ his tune changed on a sudden to ’See; they are parting!  They are parting already.  And—­and I think—­I really think—­indeed, my lady, I am sure that she has refused him!  She has not accepted him?’