ngle
and her daughter, the aunt really feeling that more blame was being
attributed to Ayala than she deserved. "Perhaps she gives herself
airs," said Lady Tringle, "but really it is no more."

"She is a viper," said Augusta.

Gertrude rather took Ayala's part, telling her mother, in private,
that the accusation about Mr. Traffick was absurd. "The truth is,"
said Gertrude, "that Ayala thinks herself very clever and very
beautiful, and Augusta will not stand it." Gertrude acknowledged
that Ayala was upsetting and ungrateful. Poor Lady Tringle, in her
husband's absence, did not know what to do about her niece.

Altogether, they were uncomfortable after Mr. Traffick went and
before Tom Tringle had come. On no consideration whatsoever would
Augusta speak to her cousin. She declared that Ayala was a viper, and
would give no other reason. In all such quarrelings the matter most
distressing is that the evil cannot be hidden. Everybody at Rome who
knew the Tringles, or who knew Ayala, was aware that Augusta Tringle
would not speak to her cousin. When Ayala was asked she would shake
her locks, and open her eyes, and declare that she knew nothing about
it. In truth she knew very little about it. She remembered that
passage-at-arms about the going upstairs at Glenbogie, but she could
hardly understand that for so small an affront, and one so distant,
Augusta would now refuse to speak to her. That Augusta had always
been angry with her, and since Mr. Traffick's arrival more angry than
ever, she had felt; but that Augusta was jealous in respect to her
lover had never yet at all come home to Ayala. That she should have
wanted to captivate Mr. Traffick,--she with her high ideas of some
transcendental, more than human, hero!

But she had to put up with it, and to think of it. She had sense
enough to know that she was no more than a stranger in her aunt's
family, and that she must go if she made herself unpleasant to them.
She was aware that hitherto she had not succeeded with her residence
among them. Perhaps she might have to go. Some things she would
bear, and in them she would endeavour to amend her conduct. In other
matters she would hold her own, and go, if necessary. Though her
young imagination was still full of her unsubstantial hero,--though
she still had her castles in the air altogether incapable of
terrestrial foundation,--still there was a common sense about her
which told her that she must give and take. She would en