"Salary, then," said her ladyship shortly; "it's all the same thing."
"No, dear, it isn't. Salary isn't wages; just as the pin-money which West allows you isn't hire. You see the difference, dear?"
"I see that you're making a perfect fool of yourself with regard to this man!" exclaimed Lady Hetherington, thoroughly roused.
"What man?" asked Lady Caroline in all apparent simplicity.
"What man? Why, this Mr. Joyce! And I think, Caroline, that if you choose to forget your own position, you ought to think of us, and have some little regard for decency; at all events, so long as you're staying in our house!"
"All right, dear," said Lady Caroline with perfect coolness. "I'm sorry that my conduct gives you offence, but the remedy is easy. I'll tell West how you feel about it at luncheon, and I'll leave your house before dinner!"
A home-thrust, as Lady Caroline well knew. The only time that Lord Hetherington during his life had managed to pluck up a spirit was on the occasion of some real or fancied slight offered by his wife to his sister. Tail-lashings and roarings, and a display of fangs are expected from the tiger, if, as the poet finely puts it, "it is his nature to." But when the mild and inoffensive sheep paws the ground, and makes ready for an onslaught with his head, it is the more terrible because it is so unexpected. Lord Hetherington's assertion of his dignity and his rights on the one occasion in question was so tremendous that her ladyship never forgot it, and she was extremely unwilling to go through such another scene. So her manner was considerably modified, and her voice considerably lowered in tone as she said----
"No, but really, Caroline, you provoke me into saying things which you know I don't mean. You are so thoughtless and headstrong----"
"I never was cooler or calmer in my life! You complain of my conduct in your house. It would be utterly beneath me to defend that conduct, it requires no defence, so I take the only alternative left, and quit your house."
"No; but, Caroline, can't you see----"