"A pretty kettle of fish this is! What do you suppose your father would have said to it?"
"I'm sure I can't tell," repeated Nash helplessly, biting his lips to get some life into them.
"And what's the matter with your hands that they are so hot and white?"
Nash glanced at his hands, and hid them away in his pockets. He looked like a man consumed by inward fever.
"I have not been over well for some time past," said he.
"No wonder--with the consciousness of this discovery hanging over your head! It might have sent some men into their graves."
Nash drummed upon the window pane. What in the world to do, what to say, evidently he knew not.
"You must put away this Jez--this lady," went on the Squire. "It was she who bewitched you; ay, and set herself out to do it, as all the parish saw. Let her go back to her father: you might make some provision for her: and instal your wife here in her proper place. Poor thing! she is so meek and patient! She won't hear a word said against you; thinks you are a saint. _I_ think you a scoundrel, Nash: and I tell you so to your face."
The door had slowly opened; somebody, who had been outside, listening, put in her head. A very pretty head, and that's the truth, surmounting a fashionable morning costume of rose-coloured muslin, all flounces and furbelows. It was Charlotte the Second. The Squire had called her a brazen hussy behind her back; he had much ado this morning not to call her so to her face.
"What's that I hear you saying to my husband, Mr. Todhetley--that he should discard me and admit that creature here! How dare you bring your pernicious counsels into this house?"
"Why, bless my heart, he is her husband, madam; he is not yours. You'd not stay here yourself, surely!"
"This is my home, and he is _my_ husband, and my child is his heir; and that woman may go back over the seas whence she came. Is it not so, Nash? Tell him."
She put her hand on Nash's shoulder, and he tried to get out something or other in obedience to her. He was as much under her finger and thumb as Punch in the street is under the showman's. The Squire went into a purple heat.
"You married him by craft, madam--as I believe from my very soul: you married him, knowing, you and your father also, that his wife was alive. He knew it, too. The motive must have been one of urgency, I should say, but I've nothing to do with that----"