Frank from us, my dear, and to--give--him--back to
the--Frenchwoman again. No, no! Oh, my God! Never! never!" And she flung
herself into George Barnes's arms, fainting with an hysteric burst of
tears.

"You had best get a strait-waistcoat for your mother, George Barnes,"
Lady Kew said, scorn and hatred in her face. (If she had been Iago's
daughter, with a strong likeness to her sire, Lord Steyne's sister could
not have looked more diabolical.) "Have you had advice for her? Has
nursing poor Kew turned her head? I came to see him. Why have I been
left alone for half an hour with this madwoman? You ought not to trust
her to give Frank medicine. It is positively----"

"Excuse me," said George, with a bow; "I don't think the complaint has
as yet exhibited itself in my mother's branch of the family. (She always
hated me," thought George; "but if she had by chance left me a legacy,
there it goes.) You would like, ma'am, to see the rooms upstairs? Here
is the landlord to conduct your ladyship. Frank will be quite ready
to receive you when you come down. I am sure I need not beg of your
kindness that nothing may be said to agitate him. It is barely three
weeks since M. de Castillonnes's ball was extracted; and the doctors
wish he should be kept as quiet as possible."

Be sure that the landlord, the courier, and the persons engaged in
showing the Countess of Kew the apartments above spent an agreeable time
with Her Excellency the Frau Graefinn von Kew. She must have had better
luck in her encounter with these than in her previous passages with her
grandson and his mother; for when she issued from her apartment in a
new dress and fresh cap, Lady Kew's face wore an expression of perfect
serenity. Her attendant may have shook her fist behind her, and her
man's eyes and face looked Blitz and Donnerwetter; but their mistress's
features wore that pleased look which they assumed when she had been
satisfactorily punishing somebody. Lord Kew had by this time got back
from the garden to his own room, where he awaited grandmamma. If the
mother and her two sons had in the interval of Lady Kew's toilette tried
to resume the history of Bumble the Beadle, I fear they could not have
found it very comical.

"Bless me, my dear child! How well you look! Many a girl would give the
world to have such a complexion. There is nothing like a mother for a
nurse! Ah, no! Maria, you deserve to be the Mother Superior of a House
of Sisters of Charity, you