better see to your room, Lady Kew. That next is mine; and I keep the
door, which you are trying, locked on other side."

"And I suppose Frank is locked up there!" cried the old lady, "with a
basin of gruel and a book of Watts's hymns." A servant entered at this
moment, answering Lady Walham's summons. "Peacock, the Countess of Kew
says that she proposes to stay here this evening. Please to ask the
landlord to show her ladyship rooms," said Lady Walham; and by this time
she had thought of a reply to Lady Kew's last kind speech.

"If my son were locked up in my room, madam, his mother is surely the
best nurse for him. Why did you not come to him three weeks sooner, when
there was nobody with him?"

Lady Kew said nothing, but glared and showed her teeth--those pearls set
in gold.

"And my company may not amuse Lord Kew--"

"He-e-e!" grinned the elder, savagely.

"--But at least it is better than some to which you introduced my son,"
continued Lady Kew's daughter-in-law, gathering force and wrath as she
spoke. "Your ladyship may think lightly of me, but you can hardly think
so ill of me as of the Duchesse d'Ivry, I should suppose, to whom you
sent my boy, to form him, you said; about whom, when I remonstrated--for
though I live out of the world I hear of it sometimes--you were
pleased to tell me that I was a prude and a fool. It is you I thank for
separating my child from me--yes, you--for so many years of my life;
and for bringing me to him when he was bleeding and almost a corpse, but
that God preserved him to the widow's prayers;--and you, you were by,
and never came near him."

"I--I did not come to see you--or--or--for this kind of scene, Lady
Walham," muttered the other. Lady Kew was accustomed to triumph, by
attacking in masses, like Napoleon. Those who faced her routed her.

"No; you did not come for me, I know very well," the daughter went on.
"You loved me no better than you loved your son, whose life, as long
as you meddled with it, you made wretched. You came here for my boy.
Haven't you done him evil enough? And now God has mercifully preserved
him, you want to lead him back again into ruin and crime. It shall not
be so, wicked woman! bad mother! cruel, heartless parent!--George!"
(Here her younger son entered the room, and she ran towards him with
fluttering robes and seized his hands.) "Here is your grandmother; here
is the Countess of Kew, come from Baden at last; and she wants--she
wants to take