“How very tiresome!  I really can’t stand these perpetual scenes. Adelaide, my love, pull the bell for my eau-de-luce. Dr. Redgill, place the screen there.  This room is insufferably hot.  My dogs will literally be roasted alive;” and her Ladyship fretted about in all the perturbation of ill-humour.

“’Pon my honour!  I don’t think the room hot,” said the Doctor, who, from a certain want of tact and capacity of intellect, never comprehended the feelings of others.  “I declare I have felt it much hotter when your Ladyship has complained of the cold; but there’s no accounting for people’s feelings.  If you would move your seat a leettle this way, I think you would be cooler; and as to your daughter—­”

“I have repeatedly desired, Dr. Redgill, that you will not use these familiar appellations when you address me or any of my family,” interrupted Lady Juliana with haughty indignation.

“I beg pardon,” said the Doctor, nowise discomposed at this rebuff.  “Well, with regard to Miss—­Miss—­this young lady, I assure your Ladyship, you need be under no apprehensions on her account.  She’s a leettle nervous, that’s all—­take her about by all means—­all young ladies love to go about and see sights.  Show her the pump-room, and the ball-room, and the shops, and the rope-dancers, and the wild beasts, and there’s no fear of her.  I never recommend confinement to man, woman, or child.  It destroys the appetite—­and our appetite is the best part of us.  What would we be without appetites?  Miserable beings! worse than the beasts of the field!” And away shuffled the Doctor to admonish Monsieur Grillade on the iniquity of neglecting this the noblest attribute of man.

“It appears to me excessively extraordinary,” said Lady Juliana, addressing Mary, “that Mrs. Douglas should have alarmed me so much about your health, when it seems there’s nothing the matter with you.  She certainly showed very little regard for my feelings.  I can’t understand it; and I must say, if you are not ill, I have been most excessively ill-used by your Scotch friends.”  And, with an air of great indignation, her Ladyship swept out of the room, regardless of the state into which she had thrown her daughter.

Poor Mary’s feelings were now at their climax, and she gave way to all the repressed agony that swelled her heart.  Lady Emily, who had been amusing herself at the other end of the saloon, and had heard nothing of what had passed, flew towards her at sight, of her suffering, and eagerly demanded of Adelaide the cause.

“I really don’t know,” answered Adelaide, lifting her beautiful eyes from her book with the greatest composure; “Lady Juliana is always cross of a morning.”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Mary, trying to regain her composure, “the fault is mine.  I—­I have offended my mother, I know not how.  Tell me, oh tell me, how I can obtain her forgiveness!”

“Obtain her forgiveness!” repeated Lady Emily indignantly, “for what?”