trying to visualize the picture she
had drawn, the possibility of his _not liking her and sending her away,
you know,_ and that, to his utter consternation, he found it was
something he could not in the least conceive of himself as doing. That,
on the contrary, the vision of her going away for any reason, of her
passing out of his life, now she had once stepped into it, left him with
a chill sensation in the cardiac region that was as unexpected as it was
disturbing. When he spoke at last, it was with a quick, authoritative
brevity that seemed to Claire to bear out her apprehension, and prove he
thought she had forgotten her place, her new place as "hired help," and
must be checked lest she presume on good nature and take a tone to her
employers that was not to be tolerated.

"You will come without fail on Monday morning."

"Very well."

Her manner was so studiously cold and ceremonious, so sharply in
contrast with her former piquant friendliness, that Mr. Ronald looked up
in surprise.

"It is convenient for you to come on Monday, I hope?"

"Perfectly."

"I presume my sister, Mrs. Sherman, will take up with you the question
of--er--compensation."

"O--" quickly, with a little shudder, "that's all right!"

"If it isn't all right, it shall be made so," said Mr. Ronald cordially.

Claire winced. "It is quite, it is perfectly all right!" she repeated
hurriedly, anxious to escape the distasteful subject, still smarting
under the lash of her own self-condemnation--her own wounded pride.

How could she have forgotten, even for a moment, that she was no longer
in a position to deal with these people on equal terms? That now,
kindness on their part meant patronage, on hers presumption. Of course,
she deserved the snub she had received. But, all the same, it hurt! O,
but it hurt! She knew her George Eliot well. It was a pity she did not
recall and apply a certain passage in Maggie Tulliver's experience.

"It did not occur to her that her irritation was due to the pleasanter
emotion which preceded it, just as when we are satisfied with a sense of
glowing warmth, an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon us with a
sudden smart."

Mr. Ronald, searching her face for some clue to the abrupt change in her
voice and manner, saw her cheeks grow white, her lips and chin quiver
painfully.

"You are not well?" he asked, after a second of troubled groping in the
dark.

"O, perfectly." She recollected Martha's injunction,