I had to pass the open boudoir window, and was unable to help overhearing the following scrap of dialogue. Mary Cavendish was saying in the voice of a woman desperately controlling herself:
“Then you won’t show it to me?”
To which Mrs. Inglethorp replied:
“My dear Mary, it has nothing to do with that matter.”
“Then show it to me.”
“I tell you it is not what you imagine. It does not concern you in the least.”
To which Mary Cavendish replied, with a rising bitterness:
“Of course, I might have known you would shield him.”
voice sounded outside. With her hand on the handle, she turned her head over her shoulder, and beckoned to me.
“Above all, Mr. Hastings, watch that devil—her husband!”
There was no time for more. Miss Howard was swallowed up in an eager chorus of protests and good-byes. The Inglethorps did not appear.