“Dear me!” she said again, in quite another tone. “I trust nothing has happened to your family--your good brother, or any of the children?” She broke off. Lydia, who was making the most dreadful grimaces, here flung her little muslin apron over her head and sobbed behind it. “It’ll break my brother’s heart, him so respected on his own property, as old in the name as gentry, yeomen these hundreds of years, and only for bad times none of them ever looking to service. And ho! my Lady, him setting such store by that girl, and me so proud of her!” “That girl! You don’t mean Pamela?” Lydia dropped the apron. “I do. The horrid, wicked creature. And ho, my Lady, it all comes of encouraging idle young gentlemen and paying their debts for them, and letting them off going to India, and if the name of Pounce is blasted, the name of Bellairs ain’t much better, and so I tell you, fair and square, my Lady!” “Good heavens!” said my Lady Kilcroney, whisking round so sharply on the sofa that Clarissa fell in one direction, and my Lady’s cushions, fan, and pocket handkerchief in the other. “Never tell me that that silly young man is--has been--can be----” “He was, he is, and as to can be, your Ladyship knows yourself what young gentlemen are! Oh, to think of its going on so long, though indeed, I might ha’ known! Haven’t I seen them walking together on a Sunday afternoon, times and again, and it’s all head toss and ‘How dare you, aunt?’ if so much as a word of warning is given!” “Jocelyn Bellairs! But what has been discovered? What proof have you?” “Oh, la!” The fire of excitement was drying up the elder Miss Pounce’s tears. “’Tis all over Mirabel’s already. Proof, my Lady? Wasn’t the unfortunate girl seen sitting in a garden last Sunday in a secret cottage, with a dark baby on her lap? _A dark baby, my Lady!_ And think of Mr. Bellairs, as black as my shoe! And her, as Miss Smithson--that’s the book-keeper, my Lady--who has just left me, said to me, as bold as brass, all in the sunshine. And she ain’t denied nothing, neither.” “Who? Pamela?” Kitty was falling from amazement to amazement. She had seen a vast deal, one way and another, of Madame Mirabel’s milliner, and if ever there was, in her opinion, an honest, sensible, good-living young woman, it was Pamela Pounce. “She don’t deny it. Miss Popple up and taxed her straight out, and she as good as admitted it. Not a bit ashamed, either.” “Foh!” my Lady fumed. “Surely you’re not going to condemn your own flesh and blood on hearsay, woman?” “My Lady,” Lydia began to pant, as if she suddenly remembered how hard she had been running. “I’m back from Madame Mirabel’s this moment, and seen Pamela, and oh, the audacity of her! Laughing in my face, and tossing her head! ‘And ’tis true,’ cries she, ‘the little rogue is dark. And if I prefer ’em dark,’ says she, ‘what then?’”