This was not quite what Wilfrid had meant to effect.  He proposed to her that she should come to the yacht, and indeed leave Brookfield to go on board.  But Mrs. Chump was in that frame of mind when, shamefully wounded by others, we find our comfort in wilfully wounding ourselves.  “No,” she said (betraying a meagre mollification at every offer), “I’ll not stop.  I won’t go to the yacht—­unless I think better of ut.  But I won’t stop.  Ye’ve hurrt me, and I’ll say good-bye.  I hope ye’ll none of ye be widows.  It’s a crool thing.  And when ye’ve got no children of your own, and feel, all your inside risin’ to another person’s, and they hate ye—­ hate ye!  Oh!  Oh!—­There, Mr. Wilfrud, ye needn’t touch me elbow.  Oh, dear! look at me in the glass! and my hair!  Annybody’d swear I’d been drinkin’.  I won’t let Pole look at me.  That’d cure ’m.  And he must let me have money, because I don’t care for ’cumulations.  Not now, when there’s no young—­no garls and a precious boy, who’d say, when I’m gone, ‘Bless her’ Oh!  ‘Poor thing!  Bless—­’ Oh!  Augh!” A note of Sorrow’s own was fetched; and the next instant, with a figure of dignity, the afflicted woman observed:  “There’s seven bottles of my Porrt, and there’s eleven of champagne, and some comut clar’t I shall write where ut’s to be sent.  And, if you please, look to the packing; for bits o’ glass and a red stain’s not like your precious hope when you’re undoin a hamper.  And that’s just myself now, and I’m a broken woman; but naver mind, nobody!”

A very formal and stiff “Good-bye,” succeeding a wheezy lamentation, concluded the speech.  Casting a look at the glass, Mrs. Chump retired, with her fingers on the ornamental piece of hair.

The door having closed on her, Wilfrid said to his sisters:  “I want one of you to come with me to town immediately.  Decide which will go.”

His eyes questioned Cornelia.  Hers were dropped.

“I have work to do,” pleaded Adela.

“An appointment?  You will break it.”

“No, dear, not—­”

“Not exactly an appointment.  Then there’s nothing to break.  Put on your bonnet.”

Adela slipped from the room in a spirit of miserable obedience.

“I could not possibly leave papa,” said Arabella, and Wilfrid nodded his head.  His sisters knew quite well what was his business in town, but they felt that they were at his mercy, and dared not remonstrate.  Cornelia ventured to say, “I think she should not come back to us till papa is in a better state.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Wilfrid, careless how much he betrayed by his apprehension of the person indicated.

The two returned late that night, and were met by Arabella at the gate.

“Papa has been—­don’t be alarmed,” she began.  “He is better now.  But when he heard that she was not in the house, the blood left his hands and feet.  I have had to use a falsehood.  I said, ’She left word that she was coming back to-night or to-morrow.’  Then he became simply angry.  Who could have believed that the sight of him so would ever have rejoiced me!”