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Updated: May 21, 2025
I won't even hear you speak of her." Mrs. Sowler sat down. "Look at your watch," she said. "It must be nigh on ten o'clock by this time. You'll make a disturbance in the house if you try to turn me out. I mean to wait here till ten o'clock." On the point of answering angrily, Mrs. Farnaby restrained herself.
It was Mother Sowler. The horrible woman was tramping round and round in the middle of the kitchen, like a beast in a cage; raving in the dreadful drink-madness called delirium tremens. In the farthest corner of the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord's wife and daughter crouched in terror of their lives.
"Her?" Mrs. Sowler repeated slowly, her eyes fixed on Phoebe with a lowering expression of suspicion and surprise. "Her?" She turned to Jervy. "Did you ask me if the child was a girl or a boy?" "I never even thought of it," Jervy replied. "Did I happen to say it myself, without being asked?" Jervy deliberately abandoned Phoebe to the implacable old wretch, before whom she had betrayed herself.
Phoebe's patience gave way. "I have told you everything," she said reproachfully; "I don't call it fair dealing to keep me in the dark after that." He roused himself directly. "My dear girl, you entirely mistake me!" The reply was as ready as usual; but it was spoken rather absently. He would infinitely have preferred using Mrs. Sowler as his sole accomplice.
Phoebe picked a last oyster out of its shell, and kept her eyes modestly fixed on her plate. Observing that the second glass of gin-and-water was fast becoming empty, Jervy risked the first advances, on his way to Mrs. Sowler's confidence. "About that debt of Farnaby's?" he began. "Is it a debt of long standing?" Mrs. Sowler was on her guard. In other words, Mrs.
This I'm certain of I kept it for six good weeks after the ten pounds he gave me were spent. And then " she stopped, and looked at Phoebe. "And then you got rid of it?" Mrs. Sowler felt for Jervy's foot under the table, and gave it a significant kick. "I have done nothing to be ashamed of, miss," she said, addressing her answer defiantly to Phoebe.
"We'll talk about that, after the lecture." His bright shifty black eyes turned furtively towards Phoebe and Mrs. Sowler noticed it. The girl's savings in service had paid for his jewelry and his fine clothes. She silently resented his rudeness in telling her to "hold her tongue"; sitting, sullen, with her impudent little nose in the air.
Second part: a villainous lawyer; misplaced confidence; reckless investments; death of the villain; ruin of Mrs. Sowler. "Don't talk about her misfortunes when she wakes," Jervy concluded, "or she'll burst out crying, to a dead certainty.
Farnaby returned again to the sitting-room, walked straight to the window, and looked out. "Any sign of him?" said Mrs. Sowler. There were no signs of him. Mrs. Farnaby drew a chair to the window, and sat down. Her hands turned icy cold. She still looked out into the street. "I'm going to guess what's happened," Mrs. Sowler resumed.
Sowler had tried bribery next; had promised Phoebe a large sum of money, to be equally divided between them, if she would only speak; had declared that Jervy was perfectly capable of breaking his promise of marriage, and "leaving them both in the lurch, if he once got the money into his own pocket" and had thus informed Phoebe, that the conspiracy, which she supposed to have been abandoned, was really in full progress, without her knowledge.
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