So loud was the objurgation of the tirewoman that she did not hear the approach of her mistress, nor indeed the first words of the Countess, “Hush, Maudlin, the poor child is not to be thus rated! Silence!”
“See, my lady, what she has done to your ladyship’s Venice glass, which she never should have touched. She must have run to your chamber while you were at mass. All false her feigning to be so sick and feeble.”
“Ay,” replied Lady Whitburn, “she must up—don her clothes, and away with me.”
“Hush, I pray you, madam. How, how, Grisell, my poor child. Call Master Miles, Maudlin! Give me that water.” The Countess was raising the poor child in her arms, and against her bosom, for the shock of that glance in the mirror, followed by the maid’s harsh reproaches, and fright at the arrival of the two ladies, had brought on a choking, hysterical sort of convulsive fit, and the poor girl writhed and gasped on Lady Salisbury’s breast, while her mother exclaimed, “Heed her not, Lady; it is all put on to hinder me from taking her home. If she could go stealing to your room—”
“No, no,” broke out a weeping, frightened voice. “It was I, Lady Aunt. You bade me never tell her how her poor face looked, and when she begged and prayed me, I did not say, but I fetched the mirror. Oh! oh! It has not been the death of her.”
“Nay, nay, by God’s blessing! Take away the glass, Margaret. Go and tell thy beads, child; thou hast done much scathe unwittingly! Ah, Master Miles, come to the poor maid’s aid. Canst do aught for her?”
“These humours must be drawn off, my lady,” said the barber-surgeon, who advanced to the bed, and felt the pulse of the poor little patient. “I must let her blood.”
Maudlin, whose charge she was, came to his help, and Countess Alice still held her up, while, after the practice of those days, he bled the already almost unconscious child, till she fainted and was laid down again on her pillows, under the keeping of Maudlin, while the clanging of the great bell called the family down to the meal which broke fast, whether to be called breakfast or dinner.
It was plain that Grisell was in no state to be taken on a journey, and her mother went grumbling down the stair at the unchancy bairn always doing scathe.