Then the strain on her mind gave way--and to Mrs.Sorrel's alarm and amazement, she suddenly burst into a stormy passion of tears.
"It's all over!" she sobbed angrily, "all over! I've lost him! I've lost everything!" Mrs.Sorrel gave a kind of weasel cry and clasped her fat hands convulsively.
"Oh, you little fool!" she burst out, "what have you done ?" Thus violently adjured, Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous millionaire, "old Gold-dust," towards her beautiful, outraged, and injured self.

Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen horror which might possibly have become rigid, had it not been for the occasional bumping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which bumping shook her superfluous flesh into agitated bosom-waves.
"I ought to have guessed it! I ought to have followed my own instinct!" she said, in sepulchral tones.

"It came to me like a flash, when I was talking to him this evening! I said to myself, 'he is in a moral mood.' And he was.

Nothing is so hopeless, so dreadful! If I had only thought he would carry on that mood with you, I would have warned you! You could have held off a little--it would perhaps have been the wiser course." "I should think it would indeed!" cried Lucy, dabbing her eyes with her scented handkerchief; "He would have left me every penny he has in the world if I had refused him! He told me so as coolly as possible!" Mrs.Sorrel sank back with a groan.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" she wailed feebly.

"Can nothing be done ?" "Nothing!" And Lucy, now worked up to hysterical pitch, felt as if she could break the windows, beat her mother, or do anything else equally reckless and irresponsible.