She lifted her head at this, and stared at K. I. as coldly as if he was a wax image in a hairdresser's window. "Don't you remember me, ma'am?" says he, in a soft voice; "or must I tell you my name?" "I'm afraid even that, sir, would not suffice," said she, with a most insulting smile of compassion. "Ain't you Mrs. Gore Hampton, ma'am?" asked he, trembling all over between passion and astonishment. "Pray, do send him away, Augustus," said she, sipping her tea. "Don't you perceive, sir--eh, au--don't you see--that it's a au--au, eh--a misconception--a kind of a demned blunder?" "I tell you what I see, sir," said K. I,--"I see a lady that travelled day and night in my company, and with no other companion too, for two hundred and seventy miles; that lived in the same hotel, dined at the same table, and, what's more--" But I could n't bear it any longer, Molly. Human nature is not strong enough for trials like this,--to hear him boasting before my face of his base behavior, and to see her sitting coolly by listening to it. I gave a screech that made the house ring, and went off in the strongest fit of screaming ever I took in my life. I tore my cap to tatters, and pulled down my hair,--and, indeed, if what they say be true, my sufferings must have been dreadful; for I didn't leave a bit of whisker on one of the guides, and held another by the cheek till he was nigh insensible. I was four hours coming to myself; but many of the others were n't in a much better state when it was all over. The girls were completely overcome, and K. I. taken with spasms, that drew him up like a football. Meanwhile _she_ and her friend were off; never till the last minute as much as saying one word to any of us, but going away, as I may say, with colors flying, and all the "horrors of war." Oh, Molly, was n't that more than mere human fragility is required to bear, not to speak of the starvation and misery in my weak state? Black bread and onions, that was our dinner, washed down with the sourest vinegar, called wine forsooth, I ever tasted. And that's the way we crossed the Alps, my dear, and them the pleasures that accompanied us into the beautiful South.