Dangerfield, who proposes great settlements.  Why won’t she have him?  For my part, I think we’re little better than cheats; and I mean to write to-morrow morning and tell the poor gentleman that you and I have been bamboozling him to a purpose, and meant all along to marry the vixen to a poor lieutenant in your corps.  Speak truth, and shame the devil, brother; for my part, I’m sick of the affair; I’m sick of deception, ingratitude, and odious fools.

Aunt Becky had vanished in a little whirlwind, leaving the general with his back to the fire, looking blank and uncomfortable.  And from his little silver tankard he poured out a glassful of his mulled claret, not thinking, and smelled to it deliberately, as he used to do when he was tasting a new wine, and looked through it, and set the glass down, forgetting he was to drink it, for his thoughts were elsewhere.

On reaching her bed-room, which she did with impetuous haste, Aunt Becky shut the door with a passionate slam, and said, with a sort of choke and a sob, ’There’s nought but ingratitude on earth—­the odious, odious, odious person!’

And when, ten minutes after, her maid came in, she found Aunt Rebecca but little advanced in her preparations for bed; and her summons at the door was answered by a fierce and shrilly nose-trumpeting, and a stern ‘Come in, hussy—­are you deaf, child?’ And when she came in, Aunt Becky was grim, and fussy, and her eyes red.

Miss Gertrude was that night arrived just on that dim and delicious plateau—­that debatable land upon which the last waking reverie and the first dream of slumber mingle together in airy dance and shifting colours—­when, on a sudden, she was recalled to a consciousness of her grave bed-posts, and damask curtains, by the voice of her aunt.

Sitting up, she gazed on the redoubted Aunt Becky through the lace of her bonnet de nuit, for some seconds, in a mystified and incredulous way.

Mistress Rebecca Chattesworth, on the other hand, had drawn the curtains, and stood, candle in hand, arrayed in her night-dress, like a ghost, only she had on a pink and green quilted dressing-gown loosely over it.

She was tall and erect, of course; but she looked softened and strange; and when she spoke, it was in quite a gentle, humble sort of way, which was perfectly strange to her niece.

‘Don’t be frightened, sweetheart,’ said she, and she leaned over and with her arm round her neck, kissed her.  ’I came to say a word, and just to ask you a question.  I wish, indeed I do—­Heaven knows, to do my duty; and, my dear child, will you tell me the whole truth—­will you tell me truly?—­You will, when I ask it as a kindness.’

There was a little pause, and Gertrude looked with a pale gaze upon her aunt.

‘Are you,’ said Aunt Becky—­’do you, Gertrude—­do you like Lieutenant Puddock?’

‘Lieutenant Puddock!’ repeated the girl, with the look and gesture of a person in whose ear something strange has buzzed.