With that intimation her ladyship threw herself back in her chair, with her elbows on the arms, and her fingers joined at the tips, as if she was receiving a deputation.  “Yes?” she said, interrogatively.  Sir Patrick paid a private tribute of pity to his late brother’s memory, and entered on his business.

“We won’t call it a painful matter,” he began.  “Let us say it’s a matter of domestic anxiety.  Blanche—­”

Lady Lundie emitted a faint scream, and put her hand over her eyes.

“Must you?” cried her ladyship, in a tone of touching remonstrance.  “Oh, Sir Patrick, must you?”

“Yes.  I must.”

Lady Lundie’s magnificent eyes looked up at that hidden court of human appeal which is lodged in the ceiling.  The hidden court looked down at Lady Lundie, and saw—­Duty advertising itself in the largest capital letters.

“Go on, Sir Patrick.  The motto of woman is Self-sacrifice.  You sha’n’t see how you distress me.  Go on.”

Sir Patrick went on impenetrably—­without betraying the slightest expression of sympathy or surprise.

“I was about to refer to the nervous attack from which Blanche has suffered this morning,” he said.  “May I ask whether you have been informed of the cause to which the attack is attributable?”

“There!” exclaimed Lady Lundie with a sudden bound in her chair, and a sudden development of vocal power to correspond.  “The one thing I shrank from speaking of! the cruel, cruel, cruel behavior I was prepared to pass over!  And Sir Patrick hints on it!  Innocently—­don’t let me do an injustice—­innocently hints on it!”

“Hints on what, my dear Madam?”

“Blanche’s conduct to me this morning.  Blanche’s heartless secrecy.  Blanche’s undutiful silence.  I repeat the words:  Heartless secrecy.  Undutiful silence.”

“Allow me for one moment, Lady Lundie—­”

“Allow me, Sir Patrick!  Heaven knows how unwilling I am to speak of it.  Heaven knows that not a word of reference to it escaped my lips.  But you leave me no choice now.  As mistress of the household, as a Christian woman, as the widow of your dear brother, as a mother to this misguided girl, I must state the facts.  I know you mean well; I know you wish to spare me.  Quite useless!  I must state the facts.”

Sir Patrick bowed, and submitted. (If he had only been a bricklayer! and if Lady Lundie had not been, what her ladyship unquestionably was, the strongest person of the two!)

“Permit me to draw a veil, for your sake,” said Lady Lundie, “over the horrors—­I can not, with the best wish to spare you, conscientiously call them by any other name—­the horrors that took place up stairs.  The moment I heard that Blanche was ill I was at my post.  Duty will always find me ready, Sir Patrick, to my dying day.  Shocking as the whole thing was, I presided calmly over the screams and sobs of my step-daughter.