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I cannot do what you ask; I am bound by pledge. Adrian is, undoubtedly, more than peculiar on certain points, and, really, I dare not, if I would, thwart him." "Oh!" cried Tanty, shooting off the ejaculation as from a pop-gun. Then, shaking herself free of Rupert's touch, she sat down abruptly in her chair again, and began fanning herself with her handkerchief.
"Cuth the old cats! they'll have each other'th eyeth out," here cried my lord marquis, interposing his little tipsy person between them. He had scrambled down the box after me, and was listening with an air of profound wisdom that made me feel fit to die laughing. "Don't you mind her, old lady," he went on, addressing Tanty; "Mith Molly ith quite able to take care of herself damme if she'th not."
Usually indeed Adrian cared too little to stand upon his rights, and insisted upon Rupert's continuing to act in his presence as he did in his absence; but this afternoon Tanty had left him no choice. Nevertheless, as Mr.
Tanty, with the delightful optimism that seventy years' experience had failed to damp, here became confident of the approach of her younger nephew's complete discomfiture, and in the cheering contemplation of that event chuckled so unctuously that Molly looked at her amazed.
And then, feeling lonely without his company," added Tanty, with a wink, "I ordered the carriage and thought I would go and have a peep at the place where poor Molly was drowned, just for a little diversion. Whether the little rogue expects you or not, after your note of the other day, I am sure I could not take upon myself to say.
"What," cried Tanty, while her withered cheek flushed, "do you mean to tell me that my nephew, Sir Adrian Landale, will decline to come a few hundred yards to see his old aunt his mother's own sister who has come three hundred miles, at seventy years of age, to see him in his own house in his own house?" repeated the irate old lady, rattling the spoon with much emphasis against her cup.
Beautiful, miraculous, consoling had been to the mourner in his loneliness the apparition of his dead love restored to life, every time his eyes had fallen upon Molly during these last few blessed days; but this new development was only like a troublous mocking dream. Tanty turned in startled amazement.
"Ha, my old quarters," quoth Tanty, disengaging herself briskly from her escort to enter the room and look round approvingly, "and very comfortable they are. And my two nieces are next door, I see, as gay as chintz can make them. Thank you, nephew, I shall keep you no longer. We shall dine shortly, I feel sure.
We pull at the chain that binds us together; nay, such being the law of this world between men and women, the positions are reversed, my captive is now my master, and Molly is the slave. Tanty, I could curse thee for thy officiousness, from the tip of thy coal black wig to the sole of thy platter shoe but that I am too good to curse thee at all!
She spoke with such extreme gentleness that for a minute the woman before her, in the seething turmoil of her soul, failed to grasp the meaning of her words. "You could not go!" she repeated in a bewildered way, "I could not wish it of you !" then with a sort of shriek which drew Tanty and Miss Sophia hurriedly towards her, "Don't you understand on Saturday if it all fails, they will hang him?"
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