e yet_.' Gently,
sir! Keep your temper. It's not at all wonderful that a woman, conscious
of having her own mercenary designs on you, should attribute similar
designs to a young lady who happens to be your near neighbor. Let me go
on. Miss Neelie, by her own confession (and quite naturally, I think),
was excessively indignant. She owns to having answered, 'You shameless
creature, how dare you say that to me!' Miss Gwilt's rejoinder was
rather a remarkable one--the anger, on her side, appears to have been
of the cool, still, venomous kind. 'Nobody ever yet injured me, Miss
Milroy,' she said, 'without sooner or later bitterly repenting it. _You_
will bitterly repent it.' She stood looking at her pupil for a moment in
dead silence, and then left the room. Miss Neelie appears to have
felt the imputation fastened on her, in connection with you, far more
sensitively than she felt the threat. She had previously known, as
everybody had known in the house, that some unacknowledged proceedings
of yours in London had led to Miss Gwilt's voluntary withdrawal from
her situation. And she now inferred, from the language addressed to
her, that she was actually believed by Miss Gwilt to have set those
proceedings on foot, to advance herself, and to injure her governess, in
your estimation. Gently, sir, gently! I haven't quite done yet. As soon
as Miss Neelie had recovered herself, she went upstairs to speak to Mrs.
Milroy. Miss Gwilt's abominable imputation had taken her by surprise;
and she went to her mother first for enlightenment and advice. She got
neither the one nor the other. Mrs. Milroy declared she was too ill to
enter on the subject, and she has remained too ill to enter on it ever
since. Miss Neelie applied next to her father. The major stopped her the
moment your name passed her lips: he declared he would never hear you
mentioned again by any member of his family. She has been left in
the dark from that time to this, not knowing how she might have been
misrepresented by Miss Gwilt, or what falsehoods you might have been led
to believe of her. At my age and in my profession, I don't profess to
have any extraordinary softness of heart. But I do think, Mr. Armadale,
that Miss Neelie's position deserves our sympathy."

"I'll do anything to help her!" cried Allan, impulsively. "You don't
know, Mr. Pedgift, what reason I have--" He checked himself, and
confusedly repeated his first words. "I'll do anything," he reiterated
earnest