"Permit me to put a few questions to your Ladyship, in presence of those who were witnesses of what has already passed."
"Oh, I can't endure to be asked questions; besides, I have no time to answer them."
"Your Ladyship must excuse me; But I can't permit you to leave this room under the influence of an error. Have the goodness to answer me the following questions, and you will then be at liberty to depart. Did I inform your Ladyship that my brother had given my nephew a great quantity of money?"
"Oh yes! a great, great deal; I don't know how much, though--"
"Come, come, have done with all this confounded nonsense!" exclaimed Henry passionately. "Do you imagine I will allow Lady Juliana to stand here all day, to answer all the absurd questions that come into the heads of three old women? You stupefy and bewilder her with your eternal tattling and roundabout harangues." And he paced the room in a paroxysm of rage, while his wife suspended her dancing, and stood in breathless amazement.
"I declare--I'm sure--it's a thousand pities that there should have been any mistake made," whined poor Miss Grizzy.
"The only remedy is to explain the matter quickly," observed Miss Nicky; "better late than never."
"I have done," said Miss Jacky, seating herself with much dignity.
"The short and the long of it is this," said Miss Nicky, "My brother has not made Henry a present of money. I assure you money is not so rife; but he has done what is much better for you both,--he has made over to him that fine thriving farm of poor Macglashan's."
"No money!" repeated Lady Juliana in a disconsolate tone: then quickly brightening up, "It would have been better, to be sure, to have had the money directly; but you know we can easily sell the estate. How long will it take?--a week?"
"Sell Clackandow!" exclaimed the three horrorstruck daughters of the house of Douglas. "Sell Clackandow! Oh! oh! oh!"
"What else could we do with it?" inquired her Ladyship.
"Live at it, to be sure," cried all three.
"Live at it!" repeated she, with a shriek of horror that vied with that of the spinsters--"Live at it! Live on a thriving farm! Live all my life in such a place as this! Oh! the very thought is enough to kill me!"