"What! Operate on myself? Not such a fool. I'd sweep a crossing to live, not blow my brains out if I were what people call ruined. I'm philosopher enough, mother, to know the value of life. Do you wish to know what I want that revolver for?" "Yes," said her ladyship, faintly; "but pray mind that your poor papa does not get hold of it." "Oh, yes," said Tom. "Well, mother, I'm going to stick up a lot of playing cards in my bedroom, and practice at the spots till I'm a dead shot." "Great Heavens, Tom! what for?" "So as to be able to make it warm for the man who comes after Tryphie. Ah, Justine, got the drops? Why, you grow handsomer than ever." "Go, impudent little man," said Justine, shaking her head at him, and then running to her ladyship, who was lying back with closed eyes. "Ah, poor, dear milady, you are ill." "My drops, Justine, my drops," sighed her ladyship. "Ah, Justine, what comfort you are to me in my sorrows. My good Justine, never pray to be a mother;" and she showed her best teeth in a pensive smile of sadness by way of recompense for the attention. "_Ma foi_! no, milady, I never will," said Justine, turning very French for the moment, and her ladyship's drops produced more tears. Tom "made a face" at the maid while her ladyship's eyes were buried in her scented handkerchief, and Justine gave him a Parisian smile as he rose, winked once more, and left the room. Then Lady Barmouth took up her lament once more. "Ah! Justine, when the gangrene of the wounds in my poor heart has been cicatrised over, I may perhaps breathe forgiveness into the ears of my children; but now--oh now--" "Ah, poor milady! what you do suffer," said the sympathising Justine; "you make me so much to think of that poor Job, only he was a great lord and not a lady, and you have not the boil." "My poor Justine," sighed her ladyship, as she smiled patronisingly at the innocence of her handmaiden, "there are moral and social boils as well as those external, and when I sit here alone, forsaken by my children--by my husband--by all who should be dear, left alone to the tender sympathies of an alien who is all probity and truth--" "Yes, poor milady, I suffer for you," said Justine. "Thanks, good Justine, you faithful creature," said her ladyship, sighing; "I could not exist if it were not for you." And Justine said to herself maliciously, "I am what that wicked young man calls a hom-bogues." CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. LADY MAUDE GOES MAD. Meanwhile Maude had sought Lord Barmouth, whom she surprised in a corner of the library, feeding his wolf and studying the wing of a chicken, which he was picking with great gusto. He did not hear her entry, and he was talking to himself as he lifted up and smelt his pocket-handkerchief.