I saw the folly of mamma's irrepressible desire to come here. I thought she was going to faint; I dare say she would have done so, she looked so very ill, but that tears relieved her. They were tears in which grief had but a subordinate share; they were nervous tears, the thunder-shower of the hysteria which had been brewing ever since she had entered the room. I don't know whether she was sorry that she had come. I am sure she would have been better if she had never wished it. CHAPTER XXXVIII. STORM. A few days later, mamma and I were talking in the drawing-room, when the door opened, and papa came in, his umbrella in his hand, and his hat on his head, looking as white as death. He stood for a time without speaking. We were both staring in his face, as dumb as he. "Droqville's a villain!" he said, suddenly. "They have got that miserable old fool's money--every guinea. I told you how it would be, and now it has all happened!" "What has happened?" asked mamma, still gazing at him, with a look of terror. I was myself freezing with horror. I never saw despair so near the verge of madness in a human face before as in papa's. "What? We're ruined! If there's fifty pounds in the bank it's all, and only that between us and nothing." "My God!" exclaimed mamma, whiter than ever, and almost in a whisper. "Your God! What are you talking about? It is you that have done it all--filling the house with priests and Jesuits. I knew how it would be, you fool!" Papa was speaking with the sternness of actual fury. "I'm not to blame--it is not my doing. Frank, for Heaven's sake, don't speak so--you'll drive me mad! I don't know what they have done--I don't understand it!" cried mamma, and burst into a helpless flood of tears. "You may as well stop that crying--you can do it in the streets by-and-by. Understand it? By Heaven, you'll understand it well enough before long. I hope you may, as you deserve it!" With those dreadful looks, and a voice hoarse with passion, poor papa strode out of the room, and we heard him shut the hall-door after him with a crash.