ngement of her papers.

"Does your ladyship refuse to listen to me?"

Lady Janet looked up from her papers as blandly as ever.

"If _you_ persist in returning to your delusion," she said, "you will
oblige _me_ to persist in returning to my papers."

"What is my delusion, if you please?"

"Your delusion is expressed in the questions you have just put to me.
Your delusion constitutes your peculiar claim on my forbearance. Nothing
you can say or do will shake my forbearance. When I first found you in
the dining-room, I acted most improperly; I lost my temper. I did worse;
I was foolish enough and imprudent enough to send for a police officer.
I owe you every possible atonement (afflicted as you are) for treating
you in that cruel manner. I offered you the use of my boudoir, as part
of my atonement. I sent for you, in the hope that you would allow me to
assist you, as part of my atonement. You may behave rudely to me, you
may speak in the most abusive terms of my adopted daughter; I will
submit to anything, as part of my atonement. So long as you abstain from
speaking on one painful subject, I will listen to you with the greatest
pleasure. Whenever you return to that subject I shall return to my
papers."

Grace looked at Lady Janet with an evil smile.

"I begin to understand your ladyship," she said. "You are ashamed
to acknowledge that you have been grossly imposed upon. Your only
alternative, of course, is to ignore everything that has happened. Pray
count on _my_ forbearance. I am not at all offended--I am merely amused.
It is not every day that a lady of high rank exhibits herself in such a
position as yours to an obscure woman like me. Your humane consideration
for me dates, I presume, from the time when your adopted daughter set
you the example, by ordering the police officer out of the room?"

Lady Janet's composure was proof even against this assault on it. She
gravely accepted Grace's inquiry as a question addressed to her in
perfect good faith.

"I am not at all surprised," she replied, "to find that my adopted
daughter's interference has exposed her to misrepresentation. She ought
to have remonstrated with me privately before she interfered. But she
has one fault--she is too impulsive. I have never, in all my experience,
met with such a warm-hearted person as she is. Always too considerate
of others; always too forgetful of herself! The mere appearance of the
police officer placed you in a situation to