Truth to tell, I desired nothing so much as to be gone and be out of this imbroglio; and the woman, whom madam had called Monterey, twitching my sleeve and whispering me, I followed her, and slipped out as quickly as I could through the door by which we had entered. Even so we were not a moment too soon, if I was to retreat unseen. For as the curtain dropped behind me I heard a man's voice in the room I had left, and the woman with me chancing to have the lamp, which she had lifted from the table, in her hand at the instant--so that the light fell brightly on her face--I was witness of an extraordinary change which passed over her features. She grew rigid with rage--rage, I took it to be--and stood listening with distended eyes, in perfect forgetfulness of my presence; until, seeming at last to remember me, she glanced from me to the curtain and from the curtain to me in a kind of frantic uncertainty; being manifestly torn in two between the desire to hear what passed, and the desire to see me out that I might not hear. But as, to effect the latter she must sacrifice the former, it did not require a sage to predict which impulse, curiosity incited by hatred or mere prudence, would prevail with a woman. And as the sage would have predicted so it happened; after making an abortive movement as if she would place the lamp in my hands, she stealthily laid it on the table beside her, and making me a sign to wait and be silent, bent eagerly to listen. I fancy that it was the mention of her own name turned the scale; for that was the first word that caught my ear, and who that was a woman would not listen, being mentioned? The speaker was her mistress, and the words "What, Monterey?" uttered in a voice a little sharp and raised, were as clearly heard as if we had been in the room. "Yes, madam," came the answer. "Well," my lady replied with a chuckle, "I do not think that you are the person who ought to----" "Object? Perhaps not, my lady mother," came the answer. The speaker's tone was one of grave yet kindly remonstrance; the voice quite strange to me. "But that is precisely why I do," he continued. "I cannot think it wise or fitting that you should keep her about you." "You kept her long enough about you!" madam answered, in a tone between vexation and raillery. "I own it; and I am not proud of it," the new-comer rejoined. Whereat, though I was careful not to look at the woman listening beside me, I saw the veins in one of her hands which was under my eyes swell with the rage in her, and the nail of the thumb grow white with the pressure she was placing on the table to keep herself still. "I am very far from proud of it," the speaker continued, "and for the matter of that----" "You were always a bit of a Puritan, Charles," my lady cried. "It may be." "I am sure I do not know where you get it from," madam continued irritably, stirring in her chair--I heard it crack, and her voice told the rest. "Not from me, I'll swear!"