CHAPTER XXVI.
Then Phebe turned to two astonished footmen who stood grinning and wondering in the hall.
“If any of you men ever let that woman into this house again it will cost you both your situations!” she said, sharply, and flew upstairs again to her mistress.
Meanwhile, Louise Barry, chagrined and foiled, and silently vowing revenge, went down the steps to her carriage, and to her dismay encountered Mrs. Laurens the elder, who had also alighted from her carriage, and just at the foot of the steps witnessed with dismay Louise’s summary ejectment from the house.
“My dear Miss Barry, what does this mean?” she ejaculated, without waiting for the preliminaries of a formal greeting.
Louise put on her most injured air.
“You saw that woman put me out of the house by force?” she inquired.
“Yes.”
“That was some more of Molly Trueheart’s work,” Louise exclaimed, seeing here another opportunity to injure her victim.
“Impossible! She could not be so mean!”
“Ah, Mrs. Laurens, you can not gauge the depths of Molly Trueheart’s wickedness. I went to her on a mission of sisterly kindness and she repulsed me, insulted me, and with the help of that great amazon, her maid, forcibly ejected me from the house.”
“After all I had heard I would not have believed shecould be guilty of this!” Mrs. Laurens exclaimed in horror.
“She is incorrigible,” Louise said, with a heavy sigh. “I went to her and offered to take her away and provide for her, knowing that your son’s house could no longer be a home for her, and pitying her in spite of the injury she had done me. But—well, you saw, Mrs. Laurens, what reception I met from that erring girl!”
“Dreadful!” sighed Mrs. Laurens in profound distress.
“Is it not?” exclaimed Louise, adding, eagerly, “Will you not aid and abet me, dear madame, in removing her, by force if necessary, from this house that is no longer a proper shelter for her head?”
“Ah, that I only might. The task would be most grateful,” Mrs. Laurens answered. “But a far different purpose is mine now.”
“Different?”
“Yes, Miss Barry, different and most unwelcome. Instead of banishing that wretched girl from this roof forever, I am here to protect her from the consequences of her sin, to shield her by my presence from the faintest breath of scandal. In short, to keep the world from ever knowing the story of her folly and sin.”
Louise paled and trembled.
“Dear madame, what can you mean?” huskily.
“I mean that since yesterday embarrassing exigencies have arisen that make it impossible for us to desert Molly Trueheart, great as her treachery has been;” and in a few words she told Louise what she already knew—the condition of Molly—that made it imperativeon Cecil, for his own honor’s sake, to give her once more the shelter of his name.
“You will not have him marry her over again! Good heavens, that will be putting a premium on her treachery, and—and—he hates her now. She could never be his beloved again!” Louise cried, in wild alarm and secret rage.
“No he can never tolerate her again, she will never be aught but his wife in name only. He will spend his time apart from her, of course; but to the world she must still appear an honored and beloved wife for the sake of the child that is coming to Cecil. We are all coming back here to stay in order to keep up appearances before prying eyes; but, of course, our intercourse with her will be of the barest sort. She will be despised among us, and it will be a mercy to us all if Providence should remove her from Cecil’s way when the hour of her trial comes,” cried Mrs. Laurens, resentfully.