However, Elizabeth had the wisdom to take no notice, but to slip from the room, and keep her own counsel.

At last one day the smouldering domestic earthquake broke out.  There was “a precious good row,” the footman suspected, at the breakfast-table; and after breakfast, Master, without waiting for the usual attendance of that functionary, with his hat and gloves and a Hansom cab had flung himself out at the hall door, slamming it after him with a noise that startled the whole house.  Shortly afterward “Missis’s” bell had rung violently, and she had been found lying on the floor of her bedroom in a dead faint, her maid, a foolish little Frenchwoman, screaming over her.

The frightened servants gathered round in a cluster, but nobody attempted to touch the poor lady, who lay rigid and helpless, hearing none of the comments that were freely made upon her, or the conjectures as to what Master had done or said that produced this state of things.  Mistress she was, and these four or five woman, her servants, had lived in her house for months, but nobody loved her; nobody knew any thing about her; nobody thought of doing aught for her, till a kitchen-maid, probably out of former experience in some domestic emergency, suggested, “Fetch Elizabeth.”

The advice was eagerly caught at, every body being so thankful to have the responsibility shifted to some other body’s shoulders; so in five minutes Elizabeth had the room cleared, and her mistress laid upon the bed, with nobody near except herself and the French maid.

By-and-by Mrs. Ascott opened her eyes.

“Who’s that?  What are you doing to me?”

“Nothing, ma’am.  It’s only me—­Elizabeth.”

At the familiar soothing voice the poor woman—­a poor, wretched, forlorn woman she looked, lying there, in spite of all her grandeur—­turned feebly round.

“Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so ill! take care of me.”  And she fainted away once more.

It was some time before she came quite to herself, and then the first thing she said was to bid Elizabeth bolt the door and keep every body out.

“The doctor, ma’am if he comes?”

“I’ll not see him.  I don’t want him.  I know what it is.  I—­”

She pulled Elizabeth closer to her, whispered something in her ear, and then burst into a violent fit of hysterical weeping.

Amazed, shocked, Elizabeth at first did not know what to do; then she took her mistress’s head on her shoulder, and quieted her by degrees almost as she would a child.  The sobbing ceased, and Mrs. Ascott lay still a minute, till suddenly she clutched Elizabeth’s arm.

“Mind you don’t tell.  He doesn’t know, and he shall not; it would please him so.  It does not please me.  Sometimes I almost think I shall hate it because it is his child.”

She spoke with a fierceness that was hardly credible either in the dignified Mrs. Peter Ascott or the languid Miss Selina.  To think of Miss Selina expecting a baby!  The idea perfectly confounded poor Elizabeth.