“I wouldn’t be sarcastic, if I were you,” said Moll. “It fits you about as well as the Lancashire giant’s breeches would. And ’tis all thrown away; because, if you mean his lordship, I wouldn’t trouble to walk out of one room into another to meet him, much less climb through a window.” Kate, her bosom still stormy, looked her scornful incredulity. She pointed to the casement. “Why that way, then?” she said. “For no reason,” answered the visitor, “except that when a body’s watched and pounced on for her every movement she has to take her own measures to steal a little freedom. The air isn’t so fresh or the company so lively here that one isn’t driven once in a while to play truant. Aye, you may sneer and doubt, madam”--she was waxing a little warm--“but ’tis true, nevertheless, that if I were to spy your precious husband in my walks, I’d go a mile out of my way to avoid him. Love _him_, indeed! I tell you that he fair sickens me. I tell you that if I drew him in a lottery, I’d tear the ticket up under his very nose.” Indeed, she snapped her fingers viciously, as if rehearsing the act, and then stood with her arms akimbo, breathing defiance. “Then why,” said her ladyship, with an extremely wrathful hauteur, yet with an instinctive wincing from the pugnacious little claws, “do you persist in this daily offence of imposing your company where it is least admired or desired?” The naughty girl broke into a laugh, and clapped her hands. “It’s come,” she cried, “it’s come, as I knew it would!” and her face fell twinklingly grave “So you want me to go?” she said. “I should have thought,” responded Kate, “it could have been small gratification to you to stay on to contemplate the failure of your designs on a virtue on which you would meanly seek to revenge yourself by pretending to scorn what you have been powerless to corrupt.” Moll fairly whistled. “Mercy on us!” she exclaimed. “Virtue! Do you mean his? And is that your way of putting it? So it’s sour grapes on my part, is it? But I never said, you know, that I had that effect on him that he has on me.” “Who would expect you to say it, vain and heartless creature? But, whatever the truth--and I look to only distortion of it from your lips--these clandestine flittings, be their object what or whom they may, can no longer be suffered to impair the reputation of this house. They must either cease or you must go.” Moll, her lip lifted, brought up her right hand with a slow flourish, and once, twice, thrice, snapped thumb and second finger together with great deliberation. “Very well, my lady,” said she. “I will go, and leave the reputation of this house in _your_ keeping. I have done my little best to purify it during my brief time here; but I am afraid the disease is too deep-seated for anything but a chirurgical operation. When _you_ have been removed, perhaps, by his royal physicianship of York, the place may have a chance of recovery.”