“Nothing,” repeated Lady Lundie, with her most formidable emphasis of look and tone.  “I applied all the remedies with my own hands; I cut her laces with my own scissors, I completely wetted her head through with cold water; I remained with her until she was quite exhausted—­I took her in my arms, and folded her to my bosom; I sent every body out of the room; I said, ‘Dear child, confide in me.’  And how were my advances—­my motherly advances—­met?  I have already told you.  By heartless secrecy.  By undutiful silence.”

Sir Patrick pressed the blister a little closer to the skin.  “She was probably afraid to speak,” he said.

“Afraid?  Oh!” cried Lady Lundie, distrusting the evidence of her own senses.  “You can’t have said that?  I have evidently misapprehended you.  You didn’t really say, afraid?”

“I said she was probably afraid—­”

“Stop!  I can’t be told to my face that I have failed to do my duty by Blanche.  No, Sir Patrick!  I can bear a great deal; but I can’t bear that.  After having been more than a mother to your dear brother’s child; after having been an elder sister to Blanche; after having toiled—­I say toiled, Sir Patrick!—­to cultivate her intelligence (with the sweet lines of the poet ever present to my memory:  ’Delightful task to rear the tender mind, and teach the young idea how to shoot!’); after having done all I have done—­a place in the carriage only yesterday, and a visit to the most interesting relic of feudal times in Perthshire—­after having sacrificed all I have sacrificed, to be told that I have behaved in such a manner to Blanche as to frighten her when I ask her to confide in me, is a little too cruel.  I have a sensitive—­an unduly sensitive nature, dear Sir Patrick.  Forgive me for wincing when I am wounded.  Forgive me for feeling it when the wound is dealt me by a person whom I revere.”

Her ladyship put her handkerchief to her eyes.  Any other man would have taken off the blister.  Sir Patrick pressed it harder than ever.

“You quite mistake me,” he replied.  “I meant that Blanche was afraid to tell you the true cause of her illness.  The true cause is anxiety about Miss Silvester.”

Lady Lundie emitted another scream—­a loud scream this time—­and closed her eyes in horror.

“I can run out of the house,” cried her ladyship, wildly.  “I can fly to the uttermost corners of the earth; but I can not hear that person’s name mentioned!  No, Sir Patrick! not in my presence! not in my room! not while I am mistress at Windygates House!”

“I am sorry to say any thing that is disagreeable to you, Lady Lundie.  But the nature of my errand here obliges me to touch—­as lightly as possible—­on something which has happened in your house without your knowledge.”

Lady Lundie suddenly opened her eyes, and became the picture of attention.  A casual observer might have supposed her ladyship to be not wholly inaccessible to the vulgar emotion of curiosity.