Mrs. Chatterton, aghast at the effect of her words, leaned back once more against her pillows.  “Don’t try to work up a scene,” she endeavored to say carelessly.  But she might as well have remonstrated with the north wind.  The little country maiden had a temper as well as her own, and all the more for its long restraint, now on breaking bounds, it rushed at the one who had provoked it, utterly regardless that it was the great Mrs. Algernon Chatterton.

For two minutes, so breathlessly did Polly hurl the stinging sentences at the figure on the bed, Cousin Eunice was obliged to let her have her own way.  Then as suddenly, the torrent ceased.  Polly grew quite white.  “What have I done—­oh! what have I done?” she cried, and rushed out of the room.

“Polly—­Polly!” called Jasper’s voice below.  She knew he wanted her to try a new duet he had gone down town to purchase; but how could she play with such a storm in her heart? and, worse than all else, was the consciousness that she had spoken to one whose gray hairs should have made her forget the provocation received, words that now plunged her into a hot shame to recall.

She flew over the stairs—­up, away from every one’s sight, to a long, dark lumber room, partially filled with trunks, and a few articles of furniture, prized as heirlooms, but no longer admissible in the family apartments.  Polly closed the door behind her, and sank down in the shadow of a packing box half filled with old pictures, in a distress that would not even let her think.  She covered her face with her hands, too angry with herself to cry; too aghast at the mischief she had done, to even remember the dreadful words Mrs. Chatterton had said to her.

“For of course, now she will complain to Mamsie, and I’m really afraid Mr. King will find it out; and it only needs a little thing to make him send her off.  He said yesterday Dr. Valentine told him there was nothing really the matter with her—­and—­dear!  I don’t know what will happen.”

To poor Polly, crouching there on the floor in the dim and dusty corner, it seemed as if her wretchedness held no hope.  Turn whichever way she might, the dreadful words she had uttered rang through her heart.  They could not be unsaid; they were never to be forgotten but must always stay and rankle there.

“Oh—­oh!” she moaned, clasping her knees with distressed little palms, and swaying back and forth, “why didn’t I remember what Mamsie has always told us—­that no insult can do us harm if only we do not say or do anything in return.  Why—­why couldn’t I have remembered it?”

How long she stayed there she never knew.  But at last, realizing that every moment there was only making matters worse, she dragged herself up from the little heap on the floor, and trying to put a bit of cheerfulness into a face she knew must frighten Mamsie, she went slowly out, and down the stairs.

But no one looked long enough at her face to notice its change of expression.  Polly, the moment she turned towards the household life again, could feel that the air was charged with some intense excitement.  Hortense met her on the lower stairs; the maid was startled out of her usual nonchalance, and was actually in a hurry.