“I dare say!” emphatically cried the dowager.  “What next?  No, thank you, my lady; now that I have at least a firm footing in this house—­as that blessed parson said—­I am not going to risk it by filling it with every bothering child I possess.  Bob departs as soon as his leg’s well.  Why what’s this?”

She had come upon a concluding line as she was returning the letter to the envelope.  “P.S.  If I don’t hear from you very decisively to the contrary, I shall come, and trust to your good nature to forgive it.  I want to see Bob.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it!” said the dowager.  “She means to come, whether I will or no.  That girl always had enough impudence for a dozen.”

Drawing a sheet of paper out of her desk, she wrote a few rapid lines.

  “Dear Jane,

“For mercy’s sake keep those poor children and yourself away!  We have had an aweful infectious fever rageing in the place, which it was thought to be cured, but it’s on the break out again-several deaths, Hartledon and Maude (married of course) have gone out of its reach and I’m thinking of it if Bob’s leg which is better permits.  You’d not like I dare say to see the children in a coffin apiece and yourself in a third, as might be the end. Small-pox is raging at Garchester a neighbouring town, that will be awful if it gets to us and I hear it’s on the road and with kind love believe me your affectionate_

  “MOTHER.

“P.S.  I am sorry for what you tell me about Ugo and the state of affairs chey vous.  But you know you would marry him so there’s nobody to blame.  Ah! Maude has gone by my advice and done as I said and the consequence is she’s a peeress for life and got a handsome young husband without a will of his own.”

The countess-dowager was not very adroit at spelling and composition, whether French or English, as you observe.  She made an end of her correspondence, and sat down to a delicious little supper alone; as she best liked to enjoy these treats.  The champagne was excellent, and she poured out a full tumbler of it at once, by way of wishing good luck to Maude’s triumphant wedding.

“And it is a triumph!” she said, as she put down the empty glass.  “I hope it will bring Jane and the rest to a sense of their folly.”

A triumph?  If you could only have looked into the future, Lady Kirton!  A triumph!

The above was not the only letter written that evening.  At the hotel where Lord and Lady Hartledon halted for the night, when she had retired under convoy of her maid, then Val’s restrained remorse broke out.  He paced the room in a sort of mad restlessness; in the midst of which he suddenly sat down to a table on which lay pens, ink, and paper, and poured forth hasty sentences in his mind’s wretched tumult.