CHAPTER IV.

One morning Minna, who breakfasted in her own room, having finished sooner than usual, in consequence of the premature arrival of Arcangela, the housemaid, with the meal, found herself also ready to go out earlier than was her wont. She put on her outdoor things and went towards the dining-room to see if perchance a young American girl, to whom she had taken something of a liking, should be already there. It was Friday, and she had promised the girl to drive with her some fine Friday or Monday afternoon in Doria Pamfili Gardens. She thought she might catch her at breakfast, and arrange the matter before going out.

She was about to enter the room, when the scene which was going on there arrested her attention. She paused, and stood spellbound on the threshold, watching it.

Several of the visitors of Casa Dietrich were seated at the table, either breakfasting or waiting till their breakfasts should be ready. Some were reading newspapers, some had letters, some were in conversation. At the end of the table nearest the door were seated a pair who, having been there a week, were this morning going away. They had been at Rome before, and had merely been here this time, they said, to refresh their memories. They were Scottish, sententious, conventional and orthodox. The husband was elderly--verging on old--with a queer, ruddy apple kind of face, surrounded with a bristly little white beard, which made a sort of frame for it. His nose was red at the tip, and his excessively near-sighted light-blue eyes looked weak and watery. He somewhat resembled some aged and faithful Highland retainer as seen on the stage; and one felt rather surprised than otherwise to find, when he rose up, that he was clad, not in kilt and sporran, but in a pair of black-and-white check trousers.

His lady-wife was more patriotic in her garb, and wore a gown of some bright tartan, of rather a large pattern. A blue ribbon was tied round her neck, and in her light hair--she was much younger than her spouse--was always to be seen a pin of great dimensions, ever stuck into the selfsame coil of the selfsame plait, and surmounted by one large and flawless imitation pearl. Hans Riemann had dubbed her ‘the Scotch Pearl’ within five minutes of first seeing her. The name by which the couple was known to the world at large was Macdougall.

There they sat, having finished their meal, and held in conversation or discussion no less a person than Signor Oriole. His back was turned towards Minna, but she saw from his shoulders that he was vexed, rasped, disgusted. His rusty frock-coat drooped mournfully towards his knees; his head was thrown back. While he listened and answered, he was engaged, as Minna saw with a sudden feeling of painful surprise, in gathering together their cups and saucers, their plates and egg-cups, and putting them on to a tray which stood in front of him. The husband of the Scotch Pearl seldom interfered in his wife’s arrangements--it was she who led the conversation, in something which, as Minna gathered, was intended for French.

‘Nous partongs aujordwee,’ she remarked to Giuseppe, folding her arms and looking at him, while the pearl gleamed from the plaits of auburn. ‘Angsee nous voulongs avwor notter congt. Est-il prête?’

‘Le voici, madame,’ replied Giuseppe, with the utmost promptitude, producing an envelope from his pocket.

‘Ow! Mercy!’ said the Pearl, somewhat taken aback by this readiness of retort. ‘Laisong nous vawr,’ she added, opening it, and perusing the items, carefully checking them off with her fingers.

Signor Giuseppe’s long thin fingers were busy, as Minna saw, among the plates and dishes. She instinctively drew a little back, but interest and curiosity tied her to the spot. She knew that he was writhing under the infliction. Wonderful to relate, the Pearl had no exception to take to any of the details of her bill.

‘Wee,’ she remarked. ‘C’est jooste. My dear, have you your purse? I want a hundred and twenty lire.’ Then, turning once more to Giuseppe, with affable condescension: ‘Nous partongs a ongze oor. Voulez-vous commingday oon voitoor poor nous, at ayay soing que tous les malles sont ong bah de bonne oor.’

‘Non, madame, ce n’est pas mon métier a moi de commander des voitures pour les voyageurs. Vous pouvez vous addresser au facchino,’ was the reply, in a voice quivering with suppressed fury.

‘Commong?’ asked the lady inquiringly, not understanding this rapid flow of words and at the same time she handed him notes for the hundred and twenty lire.

‘Merci,’ said he with a haughty bow, as he swept the last piece of crockery on to the tray with a trembling hand, and added: ‘I will at once give you the receipt.’

Leaving the tray on the table for Ettore to remove, he came out into the hall, where pen and ink were always to be found. Minna made a hasty movement to go away, but it was too late. Signor Giuseppe’s movements were not slow. He was out of the room and confronting her in an instant. For one or two seconds they faced each other, Minna wishing that the ground would open beneath her and swallow her up, Signor Giuseppe very pale and very erect. At last he said in a low voice:

‘Signora.’

‘Signore,’ she began, but he interrupted her, saying in an icy voice:

‘You are earlier than usual this morning. Can I do anything for you?’

‘I--I wonder if Miss Scotson is there,’ said Minna confusedly, as with a great effort she walked past him into the dining-room and looked round.

Miss Scotson was not there, and Minna had lost all desire to speak to her. Shaking her head, she came out of the room, giving an embarrassed, timid glance to where at one side of the hall Signor Giuseppe was writing out the receipt for the Scotch Pearl and her husband. She longed to speak to him, but dared not be the first; he took absolutely no notice of her as she went rapidly away out of the hall door, down the steps and out, in the direction of her studio, but almost unconscious of what she was doing.

‘Why did I go? What a fool I was! Why did I stand by the door when I saw him there?... But why should it matter? If he can do the work of a waiter before half a dozen others, why cannot he do it before me?’

She reached her studio, thus pondering, and tried to forget it all in her work.

This was destined to be a day of contretemps. She returned to Casa Dietrich for lunch, having an appointment in the middle of the afternoon. At the meal Signor Giuseppe sat opposite to her as usual, but did not notice her in any way, for which grace she was devoutly thankful. The lunch went off peacefully enough. Ettore appeared to be on his better behaviour, and less than an hour was consumed in the entertainment.

Minna’s engagement that afternoon was at a reception given by her old friend, Mrs. Charrington, a reception from which she dared not absent herself, though not specially anxious to go there or anywhere. She knew that some fifty or sixty guests had been invited, and that she must appear more or less _en grande tenue_. She dressed herself therefore with some care, and, a little after four, came from her room looking very handsome and very attractive in a costume of gray silk and brown fur. She was just throwing her fur cloak over her arm, knowing she would want it as she drove to her friend’s house; and thus arrayed, she went down a short passage which led into a long narrow kind of ante-room, through which she had to pass to reach the entrance hall. No sooner had she entered the ante-room than she saw that her ill-luck was pursuing her. In the room were two persons in earnest, yea, passionate discussion or dispute--Signor Giuseppe and Ettore. The subject of their discourse was the week’s wash of household linen, which lay in piles, neatly folded and fresh from the hands of the laundress, on the tables, on the chairs, on the floor, and in every direction around them. Signor Giuseppe held a long piece of paper covered with figures. He had been reading out the list of the numbers of each article, and it was Ettore’s duty to count them; to say _giusto_ if they were right, and _non c’è_ if any of them were missing. The point in question now was that some dinner-napkins were wanting, which, Ettore vowed, could never have been sent to the wash at all, for that the woman who did the washing was a very honest, upright woman, and, if they were not there, it was an indisputable fact that they never had been there, let them stand on the list as much as Signor Giuseppe or anyone else pleased.

‘You rascal!’ Giuseppe had just cried passionately. ‘Do you mean to tell me I am a liar?’

The reply was a shrug expressing volumes.

‘Look again!’ ejaculated the irate gentleman. ‘Here are twenty-four table-napkins on the list, and only twenty are to be found. Count carefully. If they are not there, I will myself go and threaten the wretched creature with the Questura and an exposure of her dishonesty. Do you imagine I will let Signora Dietrich be thus plundered and not lift a finger in her defence?’

Very unwillingly Ettore began his search all over again, and Giuseppe, furious with his slowness, cast aside the list, and with his nervous fingers turned over the things and began to help him. Minna was sorely embarrassed. This was her only way of exit. She must either steal back to her room and give up her party--for this was a business which would not be over in five minutes--or she must brave the worst, walk through the room, and take what came.

‘What a simpleton I am!’ she told herself. ‘I may turn my whole life upside down if I am to be always thinking of things like this. I will go straight through to the hall.’

She advanced with a faint hope of being able to slip unobserved past the busy Signor Giuseppe--a vain aspiration. Whether he heard her step or felt her presence, who shall say? He turned sharp upon her just as she had come up to where he was, and stood there, looking angry and excited, with a red colour in his cheeks. It was impossible to quite ignore the situation--at least, for Minna it was. She forced an embarrassed smile, and observed:

‘I see you are very busy.’

‘Yes,’ replied Signor Giuseppe with a horrid sneering laugh, as he eyed her over from head to foot, ‘I am. This is my daily work. Yours, I see, permits of more elegant arrangements in every way.’ He bowed to her deeply, mockingly, and as she still hesitated, he added in the same nasal sneering tone: ‘Gentilissima signora, pardon me if I remind you that the time of the working man is precious, and our business unfortunately takes up a good deal of room.’

She found absolutely nothing to say in reply to this. She saw how angry he was. The veins on his forehead swelled, his eyes flashed, his fingers worked. With a bow and a troubled look she passed out of the room and into the hall. Seated in a little open carriage into which she had stepped, and driving towards Mrs. Charrington’s house, she found she was shaking with excitement, vexed and perturbed to her inmost being.

‘I shall have to leave this place,’ she told herself. ‘It is an impossible situation, and cannot continue. I am not going to have my comfort ruined by a touchy man who chooses to set some perfectly imaginary value on my opinion, and who is himself nothing to me--less than nothing to me. I must go. What an unlucky moment that was in which Signora Vincenzini came to me to tell me she was leaving Rome! I felt at the time that it was the beginning of troubles, and so it was.’

She looked straight before her as they drove to one of the most fashionable streets in a new quarter of the Quirinal, where her friend lived. On setting off she had felt very angry with Signor Giuseppe for annoying her by his evident vexation every time she saw him in a position derogatory to his dignity.

‘It is senseless--so unreasonable,’ she said to herself. ‘It has to be; I suppose he has chosen that it shall be so; and he ought to accept the situation that he has created for himself. Anyone can see--at least, I can--that he is a gentleman, and that this is a most unsuitable occupation for him, but wouldn’t he be still more of a gentleman if he took it quietly--dignified the office he has to fill instead of letting its unpleasantnesses spoil his temper and make him look ridiculous? An Englishman and English gentleman would do that. Of course he ought to do it.’

But before she had arrived at her destination her thoughts had taken another turn. She was no stranger in this land; she knew perfectly well the passionate eagerness and excitability of these children of the South; it was one of the traits which had endeared them to her. And she knew that for all his undignified, unguarded, outspoken rebellion against his position, Signor Oriole was none the less a gentleman, and one of high degree. She knew, too, down in her secret heart, that his uncontrollable vexation when she found him as to-day she had found him, engaged in sordid, menial offices, arose from the fact that in his eyes she was something above and beyond the herd of guests who filled the _pensione_, and as to whose coming and going, seeing or not seeing, commenting or not, upon his position, he was haughtily and superbly indifferent.

She did not feel sure whether she was most pleased or most annoyed at this fact; she knew it was a fact, and while she was trying to decide what was her opinion upon it, her carriage stopped at the door of Mrs. Charrington’s apartment. She dismissed it and went upstairs. In two minutes she found herself in one of her friend’s lovely drawing-rooms, which were filled with a dainty, perfumed, well-dressed crowd of different nationalities. There were pretty girls, elegant women, and a sprinkling of men of the most correct and irreproachable manner and appearance. There were also a moderately well-developed ‘lion’ or two, male and female, roaring just now as gently as any sucking-dove. The trumpet tones of the American contingent were not wanting to complete this specimen of the Englishwoman abroad and at home. Most of the company were talking, laughing, and assiduously handing to each other and consuming tea, cake, and liqueurs, discussing the last star at the theatre or opera, the last scandal or gossip about the English or American colony at Rome, the last novel; in a corner were two or three who combined with fashion a passion for archæology, the last discovery, the last fragment of a statue which had been unearthed in any of the excavations, the possibility of more such discoveries on the Palatine--if only one could get under the foundations of Villa Mills, so jealously guarded by its nuns, what might not be found there? And so forth. The winter daylight was almost over, the curtains had been drawn, the lamps lighted. Soft rose-coloured or tender yellow silk shades toned everything down, and made a kind of dreamland of the rooms with their costly furniture and many treasures of art--with their soft carpets, their rich rugs, and abundance of modern comforts.

Minna leaned back in the corner of a sofa, near a small table on which stood one of these rose-shaded lamps. She had drunk her tea and was idly holding the cup in her hand, her eyes fixed on the little drop which remained at the bottom of it. She had been conversing for a short time with a funny-looking little Scotch monsignore, who figured largely at gatherings of this description, and of whom she was not particularly fond. He had just removed his dapper little figure and blonde face with its pink cheeks to the vicinity of a tall, handsome English girl, who was more disposed than Minna to be gracious to him. Minna, as she sat there, seemed to see Monsignore Macpherson’s figure fade away, and be all at once replaced by another, which rose from the ground or appeared in the air, forming itself gradually before her mental vision: a finely-set head, and a countenance at once pale and bronzed, eyes that flashed, lips that could be eloquent, nervously-moving white hands, and a very shabby suit of clothes and rusty black coat.

‘What was he like before--when he was young? How did he ever come to be in this pitiful condition? Surely no man with any will or spirit need have drifted into such a state! There must have been a great weakness somewhere, I am certain, which he now recognises. He knows it is his own fault, and that is what makes him so abnormally irritable; yes, abnormally, even for an irritable Italian, and----’

‘Minna Hastings, I have not been able to get a word with you until this moment,’ said a clear, decided voice just at her elbow.

At the same moment, a white hand, on which flashed many rings, was laid on her wrist, and Mrs. Charrington, in a billow of silk and lace, sat down beside her. Minna sighed and looked up.

‘How could I expect to be distinguished above other women?’ she asked, forcing a smile. ‘When you have fifty or sixty people to attend to some must come short.’

‘Well, you see, I do my possible--and I have been well assisted by my niece there, that pretty little thing with the yellow hair and forget-me-not eyes. She has turned the head of every Italian man in the room. She is going to spend the winter with me.’

‘Is she?’ said Minna vaguely.

Her hostess noticed her want of interest, but did not care just then to remark upon it, so she proceeded:

‘Having spoken to everyone, I may now rest myself for a few minutes beside you. You used to be the embodiment of rest and tranquillity. What is this I hear about your having left your apartment?’

‘It is quite true. I left it because I had to. I was very much annoyed about it. After revelling for so long in the comforts provided by Signora Vincenzini, it is not easy to reconcile one’s self to anything less.’

‘No, of course. And where are you now? Stay, I remember your note was dated Piazza Bocca della Verità. I never heard of any place there. What is it? A hotel, an apartment--what?’

‘What my cousin Hans, who introduced me to it, calls diggings,’ said Minna, with a laugh not altogether unconstrained.

It was one thing to act on impulse, and go, chaperoned as it were by Hans Riemann, to Casa Dietrich, and make believe that she enjoyed the flavour of Bohemianism there; it was quite another to give a description of the place--a description which should sound in any way credible or suitable to this keen-eyed woman of the world, who, however much she might in her own heart detest conventionality, nevertheless knew that it was the price which had to be paid for the enjoyment of a certain position and consideration in the world, and who did not mean to sacrifice that position and all its good things, let the price be twice as heavy.

‘Diggings--a _pensione_, I suppose you mean? Does Riemann live there? I always address to his studio; there he is, by the way, talking to Kitty. I thought I knew of all the _pensioni_ in Rome which have any pretensions to position--unhappily for me,’ said Mrs. Charrington. ‘Perhaps it is a new place. There’s ample scope for a good new _pensione_ in Rome.’

‘Oh no, it is quite old, and very shabby and second-class. Hans does live there, and I’m only staying till I find an apartment to suit me. I am difficult to please,’ said Minna briskly. ‘You would be horror-struck, I dare say, at some of the doings.... And, then, I am so much at my studio,’ she added, with forced indifference.

‘Yes; are you busy just now?’ asked Mrs. Charrington, fixing her critical hazel eyes upon Minna’s face and observing her attentively.

‘Yes--no--that is, I ought to be. I keep trying. Oh, you know, Mary, how wretched I become when I get to a certain point in my work--always! I begin with such hope, thinking that I have really, at last, hit upon an idea that someone else has not had--and had in a better shape--before. And then, some fine day, I walk into the Vatican or the Campidoglio and look at things, and it is all over.’

‘Is this all over, then?’

‘Not yet--no.’

‘Then it can hardly be that which worries you.’

‘Worries me? I am not worried,’ said Minna hastily. ‘Why, do I look worried?’

‘I said worried for want of a better name. You don’t look like yourself. From what you say of your _pensione_ I should imagine that you don’t get proper food at this precious establishment, and that it is beginning to tell upon you.’

‘Oh, what nonsense!’ began Minna, when two guests, coming up, began a profuse leave-taking.

Mrs. Charrington turned to them; she was quickly surrounded by other people. Minna, she knew not why, breathed more freely, and presently she also took her leave.

‘I am coming to see you soon,’ said Mrs. Charrington. ‘Must I come to your studio or to Bocca della Verità?’

‘Come to whichever I am most likely to be found at at the time,’ said Minna composedly.

‘Good; I shall look you up some day soon.’

She nodded. Minna went downstairs and walked till she met an open carriage.

Rome was just beginning to spend the evening; it would continue at that occupation till the small hours of the morning. The streets would be vocal, the whips would be cracking, the crowd would be moving nearly all through the night. Just now it looked gay, full of life and brilliance, as she drove homewards through the brilliantly-lighted streets and piazzas, past splashing Trevi, with its groups of loungers outlined dark in the electric light against the shining wet marble slabs, now past a row of shops illuminated by all the power of gas which could be turned on, then suddenly a plunge into some obscure, narrow street, again an open square, brightly lighted on every side, and rising from the centre of it the solemn majesty of the Pantheon, with its wondrous dome and its awful portico, seeming to say, ‘I stand alone now, and have many thoughts, many memories, O ye little hurrying children of to-day! Once I was one of a great company, some of whom were grander than I; light your gas flames, spread your electricity, multiply your scientific microscopes, but with them all ye shall never read my secret nor the secret of them that made me. That is not for the scientist to tell, but for the poet; and I observe that scientists become more and poets fewer; yet I may stand to shelter him, though he be another thousand years a-coming.’

It was a spot in which Minna had never yet found herself without a secret thrill of pleasure. She felt it even now, preoccupied as she was, and looked with grateful eyes at the huge building as she passed it. In five minutes more she was at the door of Casa Dietrich.

When she entered the hall, she found it was much later than she had imagined, and that the ubiquitous Ettore was even now on his way from door to door, knocking on each one and uttering his customary chant of ‘Dinner is ready.’

Two disastrous encounters she had already had to-day with Signor Giuseppe. She went into the dining-room in some trepidation, sincerely hoping that a third might not take place. Should such a thing happen, she would be forced to conclude that someone had looked at her with the evil eye.

For a time all went well. She pointedly made a very polite bow to Signor Giuseppe, which he returned in silence and with cold majesty, and the meal began. The soup had gone round. Then came a dish of roast meat which was first handed round Minna’s side of the table. She helped herself to it and to the vegetables which followed, and had eaten her portion before she noticed that anything had gone wrong. Then, having finished, she beheld at the opposite side of the table a row of anxious-looking, downcast faces. On the plates before them lay little heaps of vegetables which had been there so long that they had ceased even to steam.

There was no sign of any meat, and Ettore, as she soon perceived, was conspicuous by his absence. There was, moreover, something portentous, something which warned of coming disaster, in the very quietness and stillness which prevailed at that side of the table. Something had happened, or was happening, without the least doubt--something of ill-omen. Minna felt the shock and the discomfort of it as strongly as if she herself had been the person concerned. She would have given a good deal not to be obliged to look at Signor Giuseppe at this moment; but who is there who does not always at such a crisis involuntarily look in the direction he would most eagerly avoid? It was only as her eyes were dragged towards him that she became conscious that the solitary voice she had for some time heard as in a dream, holding forth, was that of Signor Giuseppe. She listened for a moment, her eyes fixed upon her plate.

He was talking to a young Englishman who sat next him, a recent arrival, whom he had taken into special favour on account of his having taken the trouble to study Italian seriously, and because he was really interested in certain periods of Roman history.

‘Yes,’ Signor Giuseppe was just now saying, ‘it is true. Tiberius was an aristocrat, nothing else. Read what the German historian says of him; how he despised the mob even more profoundly than he hated the patricians. Yet even he dared not neglect the amusement of that mob. Even he had to think out spectacles for that mob’s entertainment. There was fear mingled with his contempt. “Bread and the games” was a word now fairly established, and not to be neglected with impunity. He----’

Here Minna found her eyes, whether she would or not, fixed on Signor Giuseppe’s face, and she knew in an instant that all this brave show of historical instruction was put on; the whole thing was put on. Young Mr. Humphreys was wondering secretly how long he was to wait for his dinner. Signor Giuseppe, while he spoke, was crumbling bread with one hand, dashing the other through his hair, and casting glances of strained, anxious suspense towards the door leading to the kitchen regions, through which the service came. But, engrossed though he was with this, he of course knew in an instant that Minna’s attention had been drawn to the proceedings--that she was looking at him. This time he did not look angry, he looked agonized.

Such a fiasco in the proceedings was enough to make all the guests take themselves off first thing to-morrow morning to other establishments where they would be better served, and after all, though he hated and despised these _forestieri_, or thought he did, he was dependent on their money and their favour for--Signora Dietrich’s bread.

‘Yes,’ he continued, with a desperate effort at composure as he wandered in his misery from one theme to another, scarce knowing what he was saying; ‘there is no doubt that the gloomy-looking place you speak of, overlooking the Forum, was the palace of Caligula, but as for anyone being able to point out the exact corridor or vault in which his assassination took place, as M. Boissie, the French archæologist, pretends to do--that is a pure and simple impossibility, and----’

At this moment, at the prompting of some evil spirit or demon, there flashed into Minna’s mind a reminiscence of the days of her youth, and Brewer’s ‘Guide to Roman History,’ with its pragmatical questions and sententious answers, one of which, relating to Caligula, had sunk deeply into her mind.

‘How long,’ asked the ‘Guide to Roman History,’ ‘did this idiotic monster reign?’

She tried to suppress the almost hysterical laugh which she felt was surely coming--the laugh at the disappointed diners, the ridiculous inadequacy of the service at this strange establishment, at Brewer’s sweeping characterization of Caligula--the tears which were just as ready to come at the thought what a long day of torture this must have been to the poor fallen gentleman opposite to her, who even now could think of nothing more trivial or amusing with which to tide over this awful failure in the evening meal than dissertations on the character of Tiberius and the ruins on the Palatine.

The two sensations combined were almost too much for her; she suppressed any sound of laughter, but she could not altogether control her expression of countenance. She felt she must speak--say something, however idiotic, to someone--and she turned to Hans Riemann, intending to ask him sharply if he had nothing to say for himself, but not before Signor Giuseppe had seen first her look at himself, and then what must have seemed the ill-concealed mirth on her countenance. A flood of angry colour rushed over his face. He was evidently insulted to his inmost being, and Minna felt paralyzed.

‘I must go,’ she said within herself. ‘I must get away from here, for I can’t bear it.’

Once again her unconscious saviour in such moments came to the rescue. Ettore emerged from the kitchen looking very grave, and stole round to Signor Giuseppe as if anxious to hide himself from the view of all but him. Arrived at his side he bent low and whispered something in his ear--no long communication, but apparently a terrible one.

‘Maledetto!’ came from between Signor Oriole’s clenched teeth, and, like a whirlwind, he passed round the table, through the door, and was gone, followed by Ettore as by a pallid shadow.

Then broke loose the flood of talk, comment, question.

‘What is the meaning of all this? Are we going to have nothing to eat? Has the food given out? Has Ettore let it fall and spoiled it all? What a place is this! I never knew anything like it!’ from English and Americans, while a deep bass chorus came from the German contingent.

‘Ach, um Gotteswillen, was ist denn geschehen? Kriegen wir weiter nichts? Was soll das alles bedeuten?’

Hans Riemann uplifted his voice to soothe the impatient multitude.

‘Accidents will happen,’ he said. ‘It’s the cook, I know. He was new two days ago, and is most likely drunk at this moment. It can’t be helped.’

‘Very well for you--you have had your roast meat,’ replied young Humphreys; ‘but what about us?’

‘Pazienza! You’ll get something,’ said Hans. ‘If nothing is to be had here, they will send to the _trattoria_ close by. They do many queer things here, but they have a sense of honour as regards people’s dinners.’

Thus it happened. Signor Giuseppe did not return. Minna did not remain in the room till the end of the meal. She had had enough in every way, and retired to her own quarters early.

‘It is intolerable,’ she told herself for the fiftieth time. ‘To-morrow I shall make preparations for leaving. I won’t stand any more of this.’

Indeed, it was long since she had been made to feel so uncomfortable, and, as has been already intimated, she was a woman who had always had a great deal of her own way, and who did not take kindly to this experience--of being made uncomfortable.