ave brought us back to the question that I asked
you when you came into my room. Instead of threatening me with the law,
suppose you consider the propriety of permitting me to be of some use to
you. I am in the habit of assisting ladies in embarrassed circumstances,
and nobody knows of it but my steward--who keeps the accounts--and
myself. Once more, let me inquire if a little advance of the pecuniary
sort (delicately offered) would be acceptable to you?"

Grace returned slowly to the chair that she had left. She stood by it,
with one hand grasping the top rail, and with her eyes fixed in mocking
scrutiny on Lady Janet's face.

"At last your ladyship shows your hand," she said. "Hush-money!"

"You _will_ send me back to my papers," rejoined Lady Janet. "How
obstinate you are!"

Grace's hand closed tighter and tighter round the rail of the chair.
Without witnesses, without means, without so much as a refuge--thanks to
her own coarse cruelties of language and conduct--in the sympathies
of others, the sense of her isolation and her helplessness was almost
maddening at that final moment. A woman of finer sensibilities would
have instantly left the room. Grace's impenetrably hard and narrow mind
impelled her to meet the emergency in a very different way. A last base
vengeance, to which Lady Janet had voluntarily exposed herself, was
still within her reach. "For the present," she thought, "there is but
one way of being even with your ladyship. I can cost you as much as
possible."

"Pray make some allowances for me," she said. "I am not obstinate--I am
only a little awkward at matching the audacity of a lady of high rank.
I shall improve with practice. My own language is, as I am painfully
aware, only plain English. Permit me to withdraw it, and to substitute
yours. What advance is your ladyship (delicately) prepared to offer me?"

Lady Janet opened a drawer, and took out her check-book.

The moment of relief had come at last! The only question now left to
discuss was evidently the question of amount. Lady Janet considered a
little. The question of amount was (to her mind) in some sort a question
of conscience as well. Her love for Mercy and her loathing for Grace,
her horror of seeing her darling degraded and her affection profaned
by a public exposure, had hurried her--there was no disputing it--into
treating an injured woman harshly. Hateful as Grace Roseberry might be,
her father had left her, in his last moments, w