n him with an expression of steady scrutiny.
She opened the door to go out---stopped--considered--came back again.

"I want to speak for myself," she said. "Do you care to hear what a
servant has to say?"

Mountjoy replied that he was ready to hear what she had to say. She at
once stepped up to him, and addressed him in these words:

"I think you are fond of my mistress?"

An ordinary man might have resented the familiar manner in which she
had expressed herself. Mountjoy waited for what was still to come.
Fanny Mere abruptly went on, with a nearer approach to agitation in her
manner than she had shown yet:

"My mistress took me into her service; she trusted me when other ladies
would have shown me the door. When she sent for me to see her, my
character was lost; I had nobody to feel for me, nobody to help me. She
is the one friend who held out a hand to me. I hate the men; I don't
care for the women. Except one. Being a servant I mustn't say I love
that one. If I was a lady, I don't know that I should say it. Love is
cant; love is rubbish. Tell me one thing. Is the doctor a friend of
yours?"

"The doctor is nothing of the kind."

"Perhaps he is your enemy?"

"I can hardly say that."

She looked at Hugh discontentedly. "I want to get at it," she said.
"Why can't we understand each other? Will you laugh at me, if I say the
first thing that comes into my head? Are you a good swimmer?"

An extraordinary question, even from Fanny Mere. It was put
seriously--and seriously Mountjoy answered it. He said that he was
considered to be a good swimmer.

"Perhaps," she continued, "you have saved people's lives."

"I have twice been so fortunate as to save lives," he replied.

"If you saw the doctor drowning, would you save him? _I_ wouldn't!"

"Do you hate him as bitterly as that?" Hugh asked.

She passed the question over without notice. "I wish you would help me
to get at it," she persisted. "Suppose you could rid my mistress of
that man by giving him a kick, would you up with your foot and do it?"

"Yes--with pleasure."

"Thank you, sir. Now I've got it. Mr. Mountjoy, the doctor is the curse
of my mistress's life. I can't bear to see it. If we are not relieved
of him somehow, I shall do something wrong. When I wait at table, and
see him using his knife, I want to snatch it out of his hand, and stick
it into him. I had a hope that my lord might turn him out of the house
when they quarrelled. My lord is too wic