The doctor interfered.
"No, no," he said; "you mustn't deprive Lady Harry, at a moment's
notice, of her maid. Such a clever maid, too," he added with his
rascally smile. "An accomplished person, who understands French, and is
too modest to own it!"
The doctor had led Fanny through many a weary and unrewarded walk when
she had followed him to the hospitals; he had now inflicted a
deliberate insult by calling her "drolesse" and he had completed the
sum of his offences by talking contemptuously of her modesty and her
mastery of the French language. The woman's detestation of him, which
under ordinary circumstances she might have attempted to conceal, was
urged into audaciously asserting itself by the strong excitement that
now possessed her. Driven to bay, Fanny had made up her mind to
discover the conspiracy of which Mr. Vimpany was the animating spirit,
by a method daring enough to be worthy of the doctor himself.
"My knowledge of French has told me something," she said. "I have just
heard, Mr. Vimpany, that you want a nurse for your invalid gentleman.
With my lord's permission, suppose you try Me?"
Fanny's audacity was more than her master's patience could endure.
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