“If this lady is your niece, Madam, you will hardly wish to discuss her reputation in public. Now, all I have to say to you is this, that this is the parlour of the inn, common to all, and the only available sitting-room. Your niece, Miss----,” he hesitated, he did not remember to have ever called Mrs. Elles by any name--“has been good enough to consent to share it with me during the time you name---- ” “Nonsense! Now look here! it is no earthly use your beginning to tell me a pack of cock-and-bull stories like that!” struck in the old woman, and her overpowering emphasis actually silenced the man with the mere physical oppression of volume of sound and harsh quality of tone. The genius was no match for the virago. “I have stayed here, in this very inn, from last night. I meant to see for myself--and I have seen! The Vicar’s wife--if there is such a thing as a vicar in this God-forgotten place!--who was scandalized by the goings on here, wrote to me and apprised me that Mrs. Elles--my niece--by marriage--perhaps you will have the brass to say that you did not know that she was a married lady?” “I certainly did not know”--began the artist, almost mildly--for the sake of another woman, grown suddenly dearer to him than she had been, he thought to exercise diplomacy in dealing with the coarse virago who held that woman’s fate in her hands--but it was of no avail, since she interrupted him again, stridently, volubly, overwhelmingly, so that his forehead contracted, and he turned pale under the mere shock of the impact of the words she flung at him. “Yes, my niece Phœbe ran away from her husband--my nephew--and came straight here to you, and has been living here with you for a clear month under an assumed name. That looks pretty bad, doesn’t it? So bad that Mortimer--my nephew--will have no difficulty in getting his divorce?” “Divorce!” muttered Rivers, taken by surprise, and foolishly allowing her to see the shock her words had given him. “Yes indeed, divorce, what else would you have? He will be perfectly justified. The woman has always been a constant source of trouble and disgrace to him. She has never known how to behave herself, and God knows what might have happened, and I, for one, am rare and glad to be shot of the little baggage! And now---- ” Mrs. Poynder was not without a certain kind of penetration, and seeing herself in imminent danger of being ordered out of the room, adroitly concluded to be beforehand with the man whom she had goaded into fury. “And now, Sir, I will wish you a very good day!” she said, quite quietly, moving towards the door. “And since you are so very careful of Phœbe’s reputation--there isn’t much of it--but the landlady here tells me she was under the impression that you and she were courting. Well, perhaps now that you have ruined her, you will be gentleman enough to marry her. It is the very least you can do, when you have got her kicked out of her husband’s house!”