ord had gone out for the nurse.
Mrs. Clive had been taken bad after Mr. Clive went away the night
before. Mrs. Mackenzie had gone to the poor young thing, and there she
went on, crying, and screaming, and stamping, as she used to do in her
tantrums, which was most cruel of her, and made Mrs. Clive so ill. And
presently the young lady began: my informant told me. She came screaming
into the sitting-room, her hair over her shoulders, calling out she was
deserted, deserted, and would like to die. She was like a mad woman for
some time. She had fit after fit of hysterics: and there was her mother,
kneeling, and crying, and calling out to her darling child to calm
herself;--which it was all her own doing, and she had much better have
held her own tongue, remarked the resolute Maria. I understood only
too well from the girl's account what had happened, and that Clive, if
resolved to part with his mother-in-law, should not have left her, even
for twelve hours, in possession of his house. The wretched woman, whose
Self was always predominant, and who, though she loved her daughter
after her own fashion, never forgot her own vanity or passion, had
improved the occasion of Clive's absence: worked upon her child's
weakness, jealousy, ill-health, and driven her, no doubt, into the fever
which yonder physician was called to quell.

The doctor presently enters to write a prescription, followed by
Clive's mother-in-law, who had cast Rosa's fine Cashmere shawl over her
shoulders, to hide her disarray. "You here still, Mr. Pendennis!" she
exclaims. She knew I was there. Had not she changed her dress in order
to receive me?

"I have to speak to you for two minutes on important business, and then
I shall go," I replied gravely.

"Oh, sir! to what a scene you have come! To what a state has Clive's
conduct last night driven my darling child!"

As the odious woman spoke so, the doctor's keen eyes, looking up from
the prescription, caught mine. "I declare before Heaven, madam," I said
hotly, "I believe you yourself are the cause of your daughter's present
illness, as you have been of the misery of my friends."

"Is this, sir," she was breaking out, "is this language to be used
to----?"

"Madam, will you be silent?" I said. "I am come to bid you farewell on
the part of those whom your temper has driven into infernal torture. I
am come to pay you every halfpenny of the sum which my friends do not
owe you, but which they restore. Here is