“It is not always easy to love someone who is in love with someone else,” says Tita.

“Someone else!  What do you mean?”

“There is one fault, at all events, that you cannot find with me,” says Tita; “I have not got a bad memory.  As if it were only yesterday, I remember how you enlightened me about Maurice’s affection”—­she would have said “love,” but somehow she cannot—­“for—­for Mrs. Bethune.”

“Pouf!” says the dowager. "That! I don’t see how that can influence your conduct.  You married my son, and you ought to do your duty by him.  As for Marian, if you had been a good wife you should have taught him to forget all that long ago.  It seems you have not.”  She darts this barbed arrow with much joy, and watches for the pain it ought to have caused, but watches in vain.  “The fact of your remembering it all this time only shows,” says Tessie vindictively, angry at the failure of her dart, “what a malicious spirit you have.  You are not only malicious, but silly!  People of the world never remember unpleasant things.”

“Well, I am not of them; I remember,” says Tita.  She pauses.  “People of the world seem to me to do strange things.”

“On the contrary,” with a sneer, “it is people who are not in society who do strange things.”

“Meaning me?” flushing and frowning.  Tita’s temper is beginning to give way.  “What have I done now?” asks she.

“That is what I have been trying to explain,” says Lady Rylton, “but your temper is so frightful that I am afraid to go into anything.  Temper, my dear Tita, should always be one’s slave; it should never be given liberty except in one’s room, with one’s own maid or one’s own husband.”

“Or one’s own mother-in-law!”

“Well, yes!  Quite so!” says Tessie with a fine shrug.  “If you will make me one apart, so be it.  I hate scenes; but when one has a son—­a precious, only child—­one must make sacrifices.”

“I beg you will make none for me."

“I have made one already, however.  I have permitted my son to marry you.”

“Lady Rylton——­”

“Be silent!” says Tessie, in a low but terrible voice.  “How dare you interrupt me, or speak to me at all, until I ask for a reply? You, whom I have brought from the very depths, to a decent position in society!  You—­whom I have raised!”

“Raised!”

“Yes—­you!  I tell you you owe me a debt you never can repay.”

“I do indeed,” says Tita, in a low voice; her small firm hands are clasped in front of her—­they are tightly clenched.

“You married him for ambition,” goes on Tessie, with cold hatred in her voice and eye, “and——­”

“And he?” The girl has risen now, and is clinging with both hands to the arms of her chair.  She is very pale.

“Pshaw!” says the dowager, laughing cruelly.  “He married you for your money.  What else do you think he would marry you for?  Are you to learn that now?”