“She’s been with me such a long time,” Constance murmured.  “She takes liberties.  I’ve corrected her once or twice.”

“Liberties!” Sophia repeated the word.  “Liberties!”

“Of course I really ought not to allow it,” said Constance.  “I ought to have put a stop to it long since.”

“Well,” said Sophia, rather relieved by this symptom of Constance’s secret mind, “I do hope you won’t think I’m meddlesome, but truly it was too much for me.  The words were out of my mouth before I——­” She stopped.

“You were quite right, quite right,” said Constance, seeing before her in the woman of fifty the passionate girl of fifteen.

“I’ve had a good deal of experience of servants,” said Sophia.

“I know you have,” Constance put in.

“And I’m convinced that it never pays to stand any sauce.  Servants don’t understand kindness and forbearance.  And this sort of thing grows and grows till you can’t call your soul your own.”

“You are quite right,” Constance said again, with even more positiveness.

Not merely the conviction that Sophia was quite right, but the desire to assure Sophia that Sophia was not meddlesome, gave force to her utterance.  Amy’s allusion to extra work shamed Amy’s mistress as a hostess, and she was bound to make amends.

“Now as to that woman,” said Sophia in a lower voice, as she sat down confidentially on the edge of the bed.  And she told Constance about Amy and the dogs, and about Amy’s rudeness in the kitchen.  “I should never have dreamt of mentioning such things,” she finished.  “But under the circumstances I feel it right that you should know.  I feel you ought to know.”

And Constance nodded her head in thorough agreement.  She did not trouble to go into articulate apologies to her guest for the actual misdeeds of her servant.  The sisters were now on a plane of intimacy where such apologies would have been supererogatory.  Their voices fell lower and lower, and the case of Amy was laid bare and discussed to the minutest detail.

Gradually they realized that what had occurred was a crisis.  They were both very excited, apprehensive, and rather too consciously defiant.  At the same time they were drawn very close to each other, by Sophia’s generous indignation and by Constance’s absolute loyalty.

A long time passed before Constance said, thinking about something else: 

“I expect it’s been delayed in the post.”

“Cyril’s letter?  Oh, no doubt!  If you knew the posts in France, my word!”

Then they determined, with little sighs, to face the crisis cheerfully.

In truth it was a crisis, and a great one.  The sensation of the crisis affected the atmosphere of the entire house.  Constance got up for tea and managed to walk to the drawing-room.  And when Sophia, after an absence in her own room, came down to tea and found the tea all served, Constance whispered: