r temper firm and tactful, and
her judgment excellent. She was more than shocked; she was wounded. She
wept, as she pushed forward Hilda's replenished cup.

"You ought to take shame!" she murmured weakly, yet with certitude.

"Why?" said Hilda, feigning simplicity. "What have I said? _I_ didn't
begin. You asked me. I can't help what I think."

"It's your tone," said Mrs. Lessways grievously.

III

Despite all Hilda's terrible wisdom and sagacity, this remark of the
foolish mother's was the truest word spoken in the discussion. It was
Hilda's tone that was at the root of the evil. If Hilda, with the
intelligence as to which she was secretly so complacent, did not
amicably rule her mother, the unavoidable inference was that she was
either a clumsy or a wicked girl, or both. She indeed felt dimly that
she was a little of both. But she did not mind. Sitting there in the
small, familiar room, close to the sewing-machine, the steel fender, the
tarnished chandelier, and all the other daily objects which she at once
detested and loved, sitting close to her silly mother who angered her,
and yet in whom she recognized a quality that was mysteriously precious
and admirable, staring through the small window at the brown, tattered
garden-plot where blackened rhododendrons were swaying in the October
blast, she wilfully bathed herself in grim gloom and in an affectation
of despair.

Somehow she enjoyed the experience. She had only to tighten her
lips--and she became oblivious of her clumsiness and her cruelty,
savouring with pleasure the pain of the situation, clasping it to her!
Now and then a thought of Mr. Skellorn's tragedy shot through her brain,
and the tenderness of pity welled up from somewhere within her and
mingled exquisitely with her dark melancholy. And she found delight in
reading her poor mother like an open book, as she supposed. And all the
while her mother was dreaming upon the first year of Hilda's life,
before she had discovered that her husband's health was as unstable as
his character, and comparing the reality of the present with her early
illusions. But the clever girl was not clever enough to read just that
page.

"We ought to be everything to each other," said Mrs. Lessways, pursuing
her reflections aloud.

Hilda hated sentimentalism. She could not stand such talk.

"And you know," said Hilda, speaking very frigidly and with even more
than her usual incisive clearness of articulation, "it's not