‘It is very shocking,’ said Mr. Dockwrath; ‘very shocking. What on earth will be her fate if it be proved against her? She has brought it on herself; that is all that one can say of her.’
‘D her! d her!’ exclaimed the other, gnashing his teeth with concentrated wrath. ‘No punishment will be bad enough for her. Hanging would not be bad enough,’
‘They can’t hang her, Mr. Mason,’ said Mr, Dockwrath, almost frightened by the violence of his companion.
‘No; they have altered the laws, giving every encouragement to forgers, villains, and perjurers, But they can give her penal servitude for life. They must do it.’ '
‘She is not convicted yet, you know.’
‘D her!’ repeated the owner of Groby Park again, as he thought of his twenty years of loss. Eight hundred a year for twenty years had been taken away from him; and he had been worsted before the world after a hard fight. ‘D her!’ he continued in a growl between his teeth. Mr. Dockwrath when he had first heard his companion say how horrid and dreadful the affair was, had thought that Mr. Mason was alluding to the condition in which the lady had placed herself by her assumed guilt. But it was of his own condition that he was speaking. The idea which shocked him was the thought of the treatment which he himself had undergone. The dreadful thing at which he shuddered was his own ill usage. As for her;—pity for her! Did a man ever pity a rat that had eaten into his choicest dainties?
‘The lunch is on the table, sir,’ said the Groby Park footman in the Groby Park livery. Under the present household arrangement of Groby Park all the servants lived on board wages. Mrs. Mason did not like this system, though it had about it certain circumstances of economy which recommended it to her; it interfered greatly with the stringent aptitudes of her character and the warmest passion of her heart; it took away from her the delicious power of serving out the servants’ food, of locking up the scraps of meat, and of charging the maids with voracity. But, to tell the truth, Mr. Mason had been driven by sheer necessity to take this step, as it had been found impossible to induce his wife to give out sufficient food to enable the servants to live and work. She knew that in not doing so she injured herself; but she could not do it. The knife in passing through the loaf would make the portion to be parted with less by one third than the portion to be retained. Half a pound of salt butter would reduce itself to a quarter of a pound. Portions of meat would become infinitesimal. When standing with viands before her, she had not free will over her hands. She could not bring herself to part with victuals, though she might ruin herself by retaining them. Therefore, by the order of the master, were the servants placed on board wages.
