‘My gracious goodness!’ cried the lady of the house; and then, turning in wrath on the young man, ‘From what rank in life are you sprung?’ she demanded. ‘You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a greengrocer’s man. Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let me see no more of you.’
‘Madam,’ babbled Somerset, ‘you promised me a month’s warning.’
‘That was under a misapprehension,’ returned the old lady. ‘I now give you warning to leave at once.’
‘Madam,’ said the young man, ‘I wish I could; and indeed, as far as I am concerned, it might be done. But then, my lodger!’
‘My lodger: why should I deny it?’ returned Somerset. ‘He is only by the week.’
The old lady sat down upon a chair. ‘You have a lodger?—you?’ she cried. ‘And pray, how did you get him?’
‘By advertisement,’ replied the young man. ‘O madam, I have not lived unobservantly. I adopted’—his eyes involuntarily shifted to the cartoons—‘I adopted every method.’
Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset’s experience, she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her trilling and soprano laughter.
‘Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!’ she cried. ‘I do hope you had them in the window. M’Pherson,’ she continued, crying to her maid, who had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, ‘I lunch with Mr. Somerset. Take the cellar key and bring some wine.’
In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M’Pherson bring up from the cellar—‘as a present, my dear,’ she said, with another burst of tearful merriment, ‘for your charming pictures, which you must be sure to leave me when you go;’ and finally, protesting that she dared not spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent of Europe.
She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the corridor the Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly strong emotion. It was made to appear, from her account, that Mr. Jones had already suffered acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore’s visit, and that nothing short of a full explanation could allay the invalid’s uneasiness. Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he thought fit of the affair.