"Why do I say it to you?" retorted Mary Jupp, in her storm of angry indignation. "It is time some one said it to you. You have been killing her by inches: yes, I speak to all of you," she added, turning about upon them. "You have been killing his wife by inches: you, Angeline Ellis, with your false and subtle snares; and you, Penelope Chester, with your complacent winking at sin. He is weak and foolish--look at him, as he stands there in his littleness!--but he would scarcely have been wicked, had not you drawn him to it. You wonder that I can thus speak out"--drowning some interrupted words of Mrs. Chester's--"is it right for me to be silent, a hypocritical glosser over of crime, when she is dying? I am an English gentlewoman, with a gentlewoman's principles about me, and I hope some Christian ones: it behoves such to speak out sometimes." "You are mad," gasped Mrs. Chester. "_You_ have been mad, to allow this conduct in your house--folly, frivolity, much that is bad going on under your very eyes. Had your brother been a single man, it might have been deemed excusable by some: never by me: but he had a fair young wife, and you deliberately set to work to injure her. You did, Penelope Chester: you knew quite well what you were doing: and to encourage ill by winking at it, is the same thing as committing it. I say nothing more to _you_," she added, turning upon Lady Ellis with ineffable scorn. "You may remember certain words you said to me regarding Mr. Lake and his wife, the first afternoon you came here: I did not understand them then; I do now; and I know that, in that first hour of your meeting, you were laying your toils around him to gain his admiration and wean him from his wife. If you retain a spark of feeling, of conscience, the remembrance of Clara Lake, when the grave shall have closed on her, will be as a sharp iron, ever eating into it." Lady Ellis rose, her jet-black eyes flashing. "Who are you, that you should dare thus insult me?" Mary Jupp dropped her tone to one of calmness--mockingly calm it was, considering the scorn that mingled with it. "I have told you who I am: an English gentlewoman amidst gentlewomen: and with such I should think you will never henceforth presume to consort." Mr. Lake had made no further retort, good or bad. While they were speaking, he took out his watch, saw that he had time, too much of it, to catch the next train, and quitted the room. Mary Jupp was following. Up started Mrs. Chester. "If Clara is in the sad state you describe, Mary Jupp, I ought to go to her." Mary Jupp turned short round and faced them. "I do not pretend to any right of control over your actions; but, were I you, I would at least allow my brother to be alone with his wife in her last hours. You have come between them enough, as it is, Mrs. Chester. The sight of you cannot be pleasant to her."