"Will you do me the favour," interrupted Lady Frances Somerset, "to leave us, good Mrs. Puffit, for the present? Here is some mistake--the less noise we make about it the better. You shall be satisfied."
"Oh, your ladyship--I'm sure, I'm confident--I shan't utter another syllable--nor never would have articulated a syllable about the lace (though Valenciennes, and worth thirty guineas, if it is worth a farthing), had I had the least intimacy or suspicion the young lady was your la'ship's protégée. I shan't, at any rate, utter another syllable."
Mrs. Puffit, having glibly run off this speech, left the room, and carried in her train the constable and Betty Williams, the printer's devil, and Mrs. Bertrand, the woman of the house.
Miss Warwick, whose confusion during this whole scene was excessive, stood without power to speak or move.
"Thank God, they are gone!" said Lady Frances; and she went to Angelina, and taking her hands gently from before her face, said, in a soothing tone, "Miss Warwick, your friend, Lady Frances Somerset, you cannot think that she suspects--"
"La, dear, no!" cried Nat Gazabo, who had now sufficiently recovered from his fright and amazement to be able to speak: "Dear heart! who could go for to suspect such a thing? but they made such a bustle and noise, they quite flabbergasted me, so _many_ on them in this small room. Please to sit down, my lady.--Is there any thing I can do?"
"If you could have the goodness, sir, to leave us for a few minutes," said Lady Frances, in a polite, persuasive manner--"you could have the goodness, sir, to leave us for a few minutes."
Nat, who was not _always_ spoken to by so gentle a voice, smiled, bowed, and was retiring, when Miss Hodges came forward with an air of defiance: "Aristocratic insolence!" exclaimed she: "Stop, Nat--stir not a foot, at your peril, at the word of command of any of the privileged orders upon earth--stir not a foot, at your peril, at the behest of any titled _She_ in the universe!--Madam, or my lady--or by whatever other name more high, more low, you choose to be addressed--this is my husband."
"Very probably, madam," said Lady Frances, with an easy calmness, which provoked Miss Hodges to a louder tone of indignation.