Part 76 (1/2)
”Who?” shrieked Miss Carlyle.
”You are not deaf, Cornelia.”
”Well, you are an idiot!” she exclaimed, lifting up her hands and eyes.
”Thank you,” he said, but without any signs of irritation.
”And so you are; you are, Archibald. To suffer that girl, who has been angling after you so long, to catch you at last.”
”She has not angled after me; had she done so, she would probably never have been Mrs. Carlyle. Whatever pa.s.sing fancy she may have entertained for me in earlier days, she has shown no symptoms of it of late years; and I am quite certain that she had no more thought or idea that I should choose her for my second wife, than you had I should choose you.
Others have angled after me too palpably, but Barbara has not.”
”She is a conceited minx, as vain as she is high.”
”What else have you to urge against her?”
”I would have married a girl without a slur, if I must have married,”
aggravatingly returned Miss Corny.
”Slur?”
”Slur, yes. Dear me, is it an honor--the possessing a brother such as Richard?”
Miss Corny sniffed. ”Pigs may fly; but I never saw them try at it.”
”The next consideration, Cornelia, is about your residence. You will go back, I presume, to your own home.”
Miss Corny did not believe her own ears. ”Go back to my own home!” she exclaimed. ”I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall stop at East Lynne.
What's to hinder me?”
Mr. Carlyle shook his head. ”It cannot be,” he said, in a low, decisive tone.
”Who says so?” she sharply asked.
”I do. Have you forgotten that night--when she went away--the words spoken by Joyce? Cornelia, whether they were true or false, I will not subject another to the chance.”
She did not answer. Her lips parted and closed again. Somehow, Miss Carlyle could not bear to be reminded of that revelation of Joyce's; it subdued even her.
”I cast no reflection upon you,” hastily continued Mr. Carlyle. ”You have been a mistress of a house for many years, and you naturally look to be so; it is right you should. But two mistresses in a house do not answer, Cornelia; they never did, and they never will.”
”Why did you not give me so much of your sentiments when I first came to East Lynne?” she burst forth. ”I hate hypocrisy.”
”They were not my sentiments then; I possessed none. I was ignorant upon the subject as I was upon many others. Experience has come to me since.”
”You will not find a better mistress of a house than I have made you,”
she resentfully spoke.
”I do not look for it. The tenants leave your house in March, do they not?”
”Yes, they do,” snapped Miss Corny. ”But as we are on the subject of details of ways and means, allow me to tell you that if you did what is right, you would move into that house of mine, and I will go to a smaller--as you seem to think I shall poison Barbara if I remain with her. East Lynne is a vast deal too fine and too grand for you.”