ooled and bullied, and wouldn't put up with it any longer.
There was going to be a fair division of the property, and his sister
Annie's property, and hers--Zuleika's--too, if she'd have the pluck to
speak up for herself. All this and much more he said. Yet even while
his small fury was genuine and characteristic, there was such an evident
incongruity between himself and his speech that it seemed to fit
him loosely, and in a measure flapped in his gestures like another's
garment. Zuleika, who had exhibited neither disgust nor sympathy with
his rebellion, but had rather appeared to enjoy it as a novel domestic
performance, the morality of which devolved solely upon the performer,
retained her curious smile. And then a knock at the door startled them.

It was the stranger,--slightly apologetic and still humorous, but firm
and self-confident withal. She was sorry to interrupt their family
council, but the fire was going out where she sat, and she would like
a cup of tea or some refreshment. She did not look at Jack, but,
completely ignoring him, addressed herself to Zuleika with what seemed
to be a direct challenge; in that feminine eye-grapple there was a
quick, instinctive, and final struggle between the two women. The
stranger triumphed. Zuleika's vacant smile changed to one of submission,
and then, equally ignoring her brother in this double defeat, she
hastened to the kitchen to do the visitor's bidding. The woman closed
the door behind her, and took Zuleika's place before the fire.

"Well?" she said, in a half-contemptuous toleration.

"Well?" said Jack, in an equally ill-disguised discontent, but an
evident desire to placate the woman before him. "It's all right, you
know. I've had my say. It'll come right, Lottie, you'll see."

The woman smiled again, and glanced around the bare walls of the room.

"And I suppose," she said, drily, "when it comes right I'm to take the
place of your sister in the charge of this workhouse and succeed to the
keys of that safe in the other room?"

"It'll come all right, I tell you; you can fix things up here any way
you'll like when we get the old man straight," said Jack, with the
iteration of feebleness. "And as to that safe, I've seen it chock full
of securities."

"It'll hold one less to-night," she said, looking at the fire.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, in querulous suspicion.

She drew a paper from her pocket.

"It's that draft of yours that you were crazy e