"Oh, as to Lady Diana," she said, "there
is no doubt about that. She was greatly offended at your having sent
away her carriage and not having taken her advice, and she goes about
saying she is disappointed in you."
For my mother's sake, and my little Viola, and Auld Lang Syne
besides, I was much hurt, and defended myself in a tone of pique
which made Miss Woolmer smile and say she was far from blaming me,
but that she thought I ought to count the cost of my remaining at
Arghouse. And then she told me that the whole county was up in arms
against the new comers, not only from old association of their name
with revolutionary notions, but because the old Miss Stympsons, of
Lake Side, who had connections in New South Wales, had set it abroad
that the poor boys were ruffians, companions of the double-dyed
villain Prometesky, and that Harold in especial was a marked man, who
had caused the death of his own wife in a frenzy of intoxication.
At this I fairly laughed. Harold, at his age, who never touched
liquor, and had lived a sort of hermit life in the Bush, to be
saddled with a wife only to have destroyed her! The story
contradicted itself by its own absurdity; and those two Miss
Stympsons were well-known scandal-mongers. Miss Woolmer never
believed a story of theirs without sifting, but she had been in a
manner commissioned to let me know that society was determined not to
accept Eustace and Harold Alison, and was irate at my doing so.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61