“’Who does the best his circumstance allows, does well, acts nobly. Angles could no more,’ as I wrote in my sister’s autograph-album when I was a boy,” announced Mr. Ronald gravely.

Claire smiled over at him with appreciation.  “I’d love to come and try,” she said heartily.

She did not realize she had lost all sensation of alarm, had forgotten her altered position, that she was no longer one whom these people would regard as their social equal.  She was talking as one talks to a friend.

“And if Radcliffe doesn’t get on—­if he doesn’t improve, I should say—­if you don’t like me, you can always send me away, you know.”

For a very long moment Mr. Ronald sat silent.  So long a moment, indeed, that Claire, waiting in growing suspense for his answer, suddenly remembered all those things she had forgotten, and her earlier embarrassment returned with a wave of bitter self-reproach.  She accused herself of having been too free.  She had overstepped her privilege.  It was not apparent to her that he was 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.