“To be wicked and old must be so dreadful,” I said, thoughtfully shaking my head and casting my eyes to heaven.

“What are you thinking about, child?” she asked, jerking my hand sharply.  “Who is it that you call such hard names—­’wicked and old’ forsooth?  Answer me directly!”

“It was what you said a while ago about yourself I was thinking of, Mrs. Austin,” I replied.  “To be more than half a hundred years old!  It is so many years to live; and then to be such a sinner, too—­how hard it must be!  I always thought you were very good before; and I am sure you are not gray and wrinkled and blear-eyed, like Granny Simpson!”

“Granny Simpson, indeed!  You must be crazy, Miriam Monfort!  Why, she is eighty if she is an hour, and hobbles on a cane!  I flatter myself I am not infirm yet; and, if you call a well-preserved, middle-aged, English woman, like me, old, your brains must be addled.  Look at my hair, my teeth, my complexion”—­pausing suddenly before me and confronting me fiercely.  “See my step, my figure, and have more sense, if you are a little foreign Jewish child.  As to sinfulness, we are all sinful beings, more or less.  To be wicked is a very different thing from sinful.  I never told you I was wicked, child.  What put that into your head?”

“Oh, I thought they were the same thing.  Which is the worst, Mrs. Austin?” I asked, with unfeigned simplicity.

“There, Miriam, step on before! you walk too fast anyhow for me to-day.  Besides, your tongue wags too limberly by half.  You always did ask queer questions, and will to your dying day.  No help for it, I suppose, but patience; but it is all of that Gipsy blood!  Now, Evelyn’s line of people was altogether different.  She has what they used to call in England ‘blue blood in her veins;’ do you understand, Miriam?  Blue blood!  Catch her asking indiscreet questions!  Take pattern by your elder sister, Miss Miriam Monfort, and you will do well.”

Not knowing what evil I had done, or how I had offended, or how blood could be blue, yet sorry for having erred, I made my way as I was told to do, speedily and silently homeward, and was glad to find shelter from all misunderstanding and persecution in the arms and shadow of my “mamma Constance,” as I called her from that hour.

But, to Evelyn she was “Mistress Monfort,” from the time she espoused my father; and the coldness between them (they were never very congenial) was apparent from that time, in spite of every effort on the part of my sweet mamma to surmount and throw it aside.