Lord Harry's conduct was the first subject that presented itself when
the conversation was resumed.
My lady mentioned that she had noticed how he looked, and how he left
the room, when she had spoken in praise of Mr. Mountjoy. She had
pressed him to explain himself---and she had made a discovery which
proved to be the bitterest disappointment of her life. Her husband
suspected her! Her husband was jealous of her! It was too cruel; it was
an insult beyond endurance, an insult to Mr. Mountjoy as well as to
herself. If that best and dearest of good friends was to be forbidden
the house, if he was to go away and never to see her or speak to her
again, of one thing she was determined--he should not leave her without
a kind word of farewell; he should hear how truly she valued him; yes,
and how she admired and felt for him! Would Fanny not do the same
thing, in her place? And Fanny had remembered the time when she might
have done it for such a man as Mr. Mountjoy. "Mind you stay indoors
this evening, sir," the maid continued, looking and speaking so
excitedly that Hugh hardly knew her again. "My mistress is coming to
see you, and I shall come with her."
Such an act of imprudence was incredible. "You must be out of your
senses!" Mountjoy exclaimed.
"I'm out of myself sir, if that's what you mean," Fanny answered. "I do
so enjoy treating a man in that way! The master's going out to
dinner--he'll know nothing about it--and," cried the cool cold woman of
other times, "he richly deserves it."
Hugh reasoned and remonstrated, and failed to produce the slightest
effect.
His next effort was to write a few lines to Lady Harry, entreating her
to remember that a jealous man is sometimes capable of acts of the
meanest duplicity, and that she might be watched. When he gave the note
to Fanny to deliver, she informed him respectfully that he had better
not trust her. A person sometimes meant to do right (she reminded him),
and sometimes ended in doing wrong. Rather than disappoint her
mistress, she was quite capable of tearing up the letter, on her way
home, and saying nothing about it. Hugh tried a threat next: "Your
mistress will not find me, if she comes here; I shall go out to-night."
The impenetrable maid looked at him with a pitying smile, and answered: "Not you!"
It was a humiliating reflection--but Fanny Mere understood him better
than he understood himself.