‘You impudent creature!’ Lady Dunborough cried.  ’You shameless, abandoned baggage!  Who brought you in out of the streets?  You, a kitchen-wench, to be sitting at this table smiling at your betters!  I’ll—­Ring the bell!  Ring the bell, fool!’ she continued impetuously, and scathed Mr. Thomasson with a look.  ’Fetch the landlord, and let me see this impudent hussy thrown out!  Ay, madam, I suppose you are here waiting for my son; but you have caught me instead, and I’ll be bound.  I’ll—­’

‘You’ll disgrace yourself,’ the girl retorted with quiet pride.  But she was very white.  ‘I know nothing of your son.’

‘A fig for the lie, mistress!’ cried the old harridan; and added, as was too much the fashion in those days, a word we cannot print.  The Duchess of Northumberland had the greater name for coarseness; but Lady Dunborough’s tongue was known in town.  ’Ay, that smartens you, does it? ’she continued with cruel delight; for the girl had winced as from a blow.  ’But here comes the landlord, and now out you go.  Ay, into the streets, mistress!  Hoity-toity, that dirt like you should sit at tables!  Go wash the dishes, slut!’

There was not a waiter who saw the younger woman’s shame who did not long to choke the viscountess.  As for the attorney, though he had vague fears of privilege before his eyes, and was clogged by the sex of the assailant, he could remain silent no longer.

‘My lady,’ he cried, in a tone of trembling desperation, ’you will—­you will repent this!  You don’t know what you are doing.  I tell you that to-morrow—­’

‘What is this?’ said a quiet voice.  It was the landlord’s; he spoke as he pushed his way through the group at the door.  ’Has your ladyship some complaint to make?’ he continued civilly, his eye taking in the scene—­even to the elder woman, who through her tears kept muttering, ’Deary, we ought not to have come here!  I told him we ought not to come here!’ And then, before her ladyship could reply, ’Is this the party—­that have Sir George Soane’s rooms?’ he continued, turning to the nearest servant.

Lady Dunborough answered for the man.  ‘Ay!’ she said, pitiless in her triumph.  ’They are!  And know no more of Soane than the hair of my head!  They are a party of fly-by-nights; and for this fine madam, she is a kitchen dish-washer at Oxford!  And the commonest, lowest slut that—­’

‘Your ladyship has said enough,’ the landlord interposed, moved by pity or the girl’s beauty.  ’I know already that there has been some mistake here, and that these persons have no right to the rooms they occupy.  Sir George Soane has alighted within the last few minutes—­’

‘And knows nothing of them!’ my lady cried, clapping her hands in triumph.

‘That is so,’ the landlord answered ominously.  Then, turning to the bewildered attorney, ‘For you, sir,’ he continued, ’if you have anything to say, be good enough to speak.  On the face of it, this is a dirty trick you have played me.’