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I tell you all plainly, if you go on opposing me in this, I don't answer for myself. If Herr Grosse is not recalled to Dimchurch before the end of the week I am my own mistress; I will go to him in London!" Both the brothers looked at me. "Have you nothing to say, Madame Pratolungo?" asked Nugent. Oscar was too painfully agitated to speak.
His sense of his own importance rose again, like the mercury in a thermometer when you put it into a warm bath. "Exactly what I was about to suggest," he said. "Gootheridge of the Gross Hands is a very worthy person for his station in life. Let us have Gootheridge, by all means. Don't be alarmed, Madame Pratolungo. We are all in the hands of Providence.
I really can NOT make the housekeeping money last at this rate. Don't go, Madame Pratolungo! I shall have done directly. What! You must go! Oh, then, put the book back on my lap, please and look behind that sack of flour. The first volume slipped down there this morning, and I haven't had time to pick it up since. Ah, that's it. All over flour! there's a hole in the sack I suppose.
She sat down once more, and drifted all on a sudden into a question of pure morality. "Tell me this," she said. "Is the greatest virtue, the virtue which it is most difficult to practice?" "I suppose so," I answered. She drummed with both hands on the table, petulantly, viciously, as hard as she could. "Then, Madame Pratolungo," she said, "the greatest of all the virtues is Patience.
"Permit me to inquire, Madame Pratolungo," he said with his loftiest emphasis, "in what capacity are You here?" "In the capacity of Oscar's friend," I answered. "You will get rid of us both to-morrow." I banged the door behind me, and went up-stairs. If I had been Mr. Finch's wife, I believe I should have ended in making quite an agreeable man of him. Mrs.
Madame Pratolungo no longer possesses my confidence. When you have read on a little farther, she will no longer possess yours. "Alas, my love, I must amaze you, shock you, grieve you I who would lay down my life for your happiness! Let me write it in the fewest words. I have made a terrible discovery. Lucilla! you have trusted Madame Pratolungo as your friend. Trust her no longer.
Is Madame Pratolungo not clever enough and unscrupulous enough to undermine our confidence, and to turn against us, to the wickedest purpose, the influence which she already possesses at the rectory? How do we know that she is not in communication with Nugent at this moment?" I stopped him there I could not endure it. "You have seen your brother," I said.
"I don't deny that the consequences of undeceiving her may be serious," I said. "But, for all that, I will have no share in the cruelty of keeping her deceived." Nugent held up his forefinger, warningly. "Pause, and reflect, Madame Pratolungo! The mischief that you may do, as matters stand now, may be mischief that you can never repair. It's useless to ask you to alter your mind.
Do me a red herring!" He came back for the second time, with his eyes closed and his hand laid distractedly on his head. He appealed alternately to Mrs. Finch and to me. "See for yourselves Mrs. Finch! Madame Pratolungo! see for yourselves what a state I am in. It's simply pitiable. I hesitate about the most trifling things.
"I propose to be present among the rest of you, at the most interesting moment of Lucilla's life." "No! you don't propose that!" "I do!" "You have forgotten something, Mr. Nugent Dubourg." "What is it, Madame Pratolungo?" "You have forgotten that Lucilla believes the brother with the discolored face to be You, and the brother with the fair complexion to be Oscar.
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