“Yes, telling you! And now you’ve
mentioned Mr Juniper’s name, Mr Eames, and Mr
Cradell too, may know the whole of it. There’s
been nothing about Mr Juniper that I’m ashamed
of.”
“It would be difficult to make you ashamed of
anything, I believe.”
“But let me tell you this, Mrs Lupex, you’re
not going to destroy the respectability of this house
by your goings on.”
“It was a bad day for me when I let Lupex bring
me into it.”
“Then pay your bill, and walk out of it,”
said Amelia, waving her hand towards the door.
“I’ll undertake to say there shan’t
be any notice required. Only you pay mother what
you owe, and you’re free to go at once.”
“I shall go just when I please, and not one
hour before. Who are you, you gipsy, to speak
to me in this way?”
“And as for going, go you shall, if we have
to call in the police to make you.”
Amelia, as at this period of the fight she stood fronting
her foe with her arms akimbo, certainly seemed to
have the best of the battle. But the bitterness
of Mrs Lupex’s tongue had hardly yet produced
its greatest results. I am inclined to think that
the married lady would have silenced her who was single,
had the fight been allowed to rage,—always
presuming that no resort to grappling-irons took place.
But at this moment Mrs Roper entered the room, accompanied
by her son, and both the combatants for a moment retreated.
“Amelia, what’s all this?” said
Mrs Roper, trying to assume a look of agonised amazement.
“Ask Mrs Lupex,” said Amelia.
“And Mrs Lupex will answer,” said that
lady. “Your daughter has come in here,
and attacked me—in such language—before
Mr Cradell too—”
“Why doesn’t she pay what she owes, and
leave the house?” said Amelia.
“Hold your tongue,” said her brother.
“What she owes is no affair of yours.”
“But it’s an affair of mine, when I’m
insulted by such a creature as that.”
“Creature!” said Mrs Lupex. “I’d
like to know which is most like a creature! But
I’ll tell you what it is, Amelia Roper—”
Here, however, her eloquence was stopped, for Amelia
had disappeared through the door, having been pushed
out of the room by her brother. Whereupon Mrs
Lupex, having found a sofa convenient for the service,
betook herself to hysterics. There for the moment
we will leave her, hoping that poor Mrs Roper was
not kept late out of her bed.
“What a deuce of a mess Eames will make of it
if he marries that girl!” Such was Cradell’s
reflection as he betook himself to his own room.
But of his own part in the night’s transactions
he was rather proud than otherwise, feeling that the
married lady’s regard for him had been the cause
of the battle which had raged. So, likewise, did
Paris derive much gratification from the ten years’
siege of Troy.
Lilian Dale Becomes a Butterfly
