She leaned her head upon her hand, and that intelligent face of hers quite shone with hard thought.
At last, after long and intense thinking, she spoke.
“I'll teach you to be inhuman, Mr. Richard Bassett,” said she, slowly, and with a strange depth of resolution.
Then Mary Wells and she put their heads together in close discussion; but now Lady Bassett took the lead, and revealed to her astonished adviser extraordinary and astounding qualities.
They had driven her to bay, and that is a perilous game to play with such a woman.
Mary Wells found herself a child compared with her mistress, now that that lady was driven to put out all her powers.
The conversation lasted about two hours: in that time the whole campaign was settled.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MARY WELLS by order went down, in a loose morning wrapper her mistress had given her, and dined in the servants' hall. She was welcomed with a sort of shout, half ironical; and the chief butler said,