Up came the maid-servant, a formal old woman, most respectable.

"Hark ye, old girl!" said Darvil; "bring up the best you have to
eat--not particular--let there be plenty. And I say--a bottle of
brandy. Come, don't stand there staring like a stuck pig. Budge! Hell
and furies! don't you hear me?"

The servant retreated, as if a pistol had been put to her head, and
Darvil, laughing loud, threw himself again upon the sofa. Alice looked
at him, and, still without saying a word, glided from the room--her
child in her arms. She hurried down-stairs, and in the hall met her
servant. The latter, who was much attached to her mistress, was alarmed
to see her about to leave the house.

"Why, marm, where be you going? Dear heart, you have no bonnet on!
What is the matter? Who is this?"

"Oh!" cried Alice, in agony; "what shall I do?--where shall I fly?" The
door above opened. Alice heard, started, and the next moment was in the
street. She ran on breathlessly, and like one insane. Her mind was,
indeed, for the time, gone; and had a river flowed before her way, she
would have plunged into an escape from a world that seemed too narrow to
hold a father and his child.

But just as she turned the corner of a street that led into the more
public thoroughfares, she felt her arm grasped, and a voice called out
her name in surprised and startled accents.

"Heavens, Mrs. Butler! Alice! What do I see? What is the matter?"