But old Martha, their maid, who had stood all the time pinching the strings of her apron, clasping her hands together, and then lifting them up to heaven, with many other gestures which marked her impatience, now no longer able to contain her indignation, burst out like thunder, and asked Emily how she could possibly stand there, looking her mamma in the face, and presume to talk of _falsities_, when she must be conscious she was at that moment guilty, not only of a most terrible and wicked falsity, in accusing an innocent person of the fault she had herself committed, but was also making the most ungrateful return that any one could be capable of, for an action which certainly deserved the greatest praise, and which she must be conscious she owed to her cousin's generosity and kindness.
