She could not have enough of wondering, and fondling me, and weeping; but her inarticulateness filled me with a horrible foreboding. “What!” I cried, giving her a little shake; “don’t tell me, miss, that--but, no, I won’t hear it! ’Tis grotesque beyond reason.” “What do you mean?” she whispered. I looked searchingly into her eyes. “No,” I said, reassured; “there are the same unborn babies there. But who, then, was that brute you ran from?” She put her arms round my neck. “He--he is a groom of madam’s, and high in favour with her because a good Catholic. She bids me listen to him; and--and I don’t know what she means, Diana, or what he means. He is a coarse and violent man--sometimes. But she forces me into his company, and to see the town together. And O, Diana! I am almost sure he drinks too much.” I burst into a laugh. “You should be whipped for the slander, child. But I suspect the truth. We don’t run but from those we have a partiality for. Watch Moll and Meg at dragging-time in the fairs.” She cried “Diana!” and, looking up horrified into my face, read its mockery, and, gasping out, “I am very unhappy,” fell away from me. “You poor little creature!” I cried, fiercely moved by her distress; “if _you_ don’t know what madam means, _I do_. ’Tis the way with the quality to pension off their discarded fancies on Jack or Molly.” She showed by her manner that she did not understand me, but my indignation would not let me explain. Moreover, I was too satisfied with my own solution to wish it contradicted. “Never mind,” I said, stamping my foot. “Tell me everything--every word.” Then it all came out in a flood: How, since my removal, madam had visited more and more upon her innocent head the trespasses of her poor little friend and sister; how this habit, vindictive at the best, had grown into a very fury of spite (which I laughed much to hear about) when de Crespigny’s wandering fancy had begun (as it inevitably had) to turn from the hop-pole, which had invited it to be wreathed about itself, to the ripe little sapling growing so snug beside; how, in her jealousy, my lady had driven her below stairs, and at last made her altogether consort with the servants as her proper peers, who had only been lifted by her generosity out of the gutter; how, not content with this, literal, debasement, she had thought further to soil her by forcing upon her the reversion of her tipsy _cavaliere servente_ (as, anyhow, I chose to think him), a tyranny which had at last driven the soft little creature to despair and rebellion. So she told me all, though with less force and conviction, poor simplicity, than I have chosen to put into her relation. “And you was gone--and how did you escape, Diana?--and I hated Mr. de Crespigny as much as I hate this one--and it all makes no difference, and I don’t know how I can bear it longer,” she cried, in a breath. “Very well, then,” I said, and looked sternly at her. “You must find the courage to run away.”