Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/25

 tones, with an effect of abruptness, 'And pray, Miss Pynsent, does the child know it?'

'Know about Lord Frederick?' Miss Pynsent palpitated.

'Bother Lord Frederick! Know about his mother.'

'Oh, I can't say that. I have never told him.'

'But has any one else told him?'

To this inquiry Miss Pynsent's answer was more prompt and more proud; it was with an agreeable sense of having conducted herself with extraordinary wisdom and propriety that she replied, 'How could any one know? I have never breathed it to a creature!'

Mrs. Bowerbank gave utterance to no commendation; she only put down her empty glass and wiped her large mouth with much thoroughness and deliberation. Then she said, as if it were as cheerful an idea as, in the premises, she was capable of expressing, 'Ah, well, there'll be plenty, later on, to give him all information!'

'I pray God he may live and die without knowing it!' Miss Pynsent cried, with eagerness.

Her companion gazed at her with a kind of professional patience. 'You don't keep your ideas together. How can he go to her, then, if he's never to know?'

'Oh, did you mean she would tell him?' Miss Pynsent responded, plaintively.

'Tell him! He won't need to be told, once she gets hold of him and gives him—what she told me.'

'What she told you?' Miss Pynsent repeated, open-eyed.

'The kiss her lips have been famished for, for years.'

'Ah, poor desolate woman!' the little dressmaker