“Yes, telling you!  And now you’ve mentioned Mr Juniper’s name, Mr Eames, and Mr Cradell too, may know the whole of it.  There’s been nothing about Mr Juniper that I’m ashamed of.”

“It would be difficult to make you ashamed of anything, I believe.”

“But let me tell you this, Mrs Lupex, you’re not going to destroy the respectability of this house by your goings on.”

“It was a bad day for me when I let Lupex bring me into it.”

“Then pay your bill, and walk out of it,” said Amelia, waving her hand towards the door.  “I’ll undertake to say there shan’t be any notice required.  Only you pay mother what you owe, and you’re free to go at once.”

“I shall go just when I please, and not one hour before.  Who are you, you gipsy, to speak to me in this way?”

“And as for going, go you shall, if we have to call in the police to make you.”

Amelia, as at this period of the fight she stood fronting her foe with her arms akimbo, certainly seemed to have the best of the battle.  But the bitterness of Mrs Lupex’s tongue had hardly yet produced its greatest results.  I am inclined to think that the married lady would have silenced her who was single, had the fight been allowed to rage,—­always presuming that no resort to grappling-irons took place.  But at this moment Mrs Roper entered the room, accompanied by her son, and both the combatants for a moment retreated.

“Amelia, what’s all this?” said Mrs Roper, trying to assume a look of agonised amazement.

“Ask Mrs Lupex,” said Amelia.

“And Mrs Lupex will answer,” said that lady.  “Your daughter has come in here, and attacked me—­in such language—­before Mr Cradell too—­”

“Why doesn’t she pay what she owes, and leave the house?” said Amelia.

“Hold your tongue,” said her brother.  “What she owes is no affair of yours.”

“But it’s an affair of mine, when I’m insulted by such a creature as that.”

“Creature!” said Mrs Lupex.  “I’d like to know which is most like a creature!  But I’ll tell you what it is, Amelia Roper—­” Here, however, her eloquence was stopped, for Amelia had disappeared through the door, having been pushed out of the room by her brother.  Whereupon Mrs Lupex, having found a sofa convenient for the service, betook herself to hysterics.  There for the moment we will leave her, hoping that poor Mrs Roper was not kept late out of her bed.

“What a deuce of a mess Eames will make of it if he marries that girl!” Such was Cradell’s reflection as he betook himself to his own room.  But of his own part in the night’s transactions he was rather proud than otherwise, feeling that the married lady’s regard for him had been the cause of the battle which had raged.  So, likewise, did Paris derive much gratification from the ten years’ siege of Troy.

CHAPTER XII

Lilian Dale Becomes a Butterfly