"Yes, miss Pert, I do," Agnes replied, in a voice which was shrill with rage. "I know she's the grand-daughter of an old woman who lives in a cottage, an old woman who was nothing but a domestic servant brought up to scrub and clean and do all sorts of menial work. You cannot deny it, Ann Reed."
"Certainly I cannot, nor do I wish I could," rejoined Ann in a voice which, though low in tone, was expressive of intense scorn.
"No wonder Dr. Reed keeps his mother down in Devonshire!" sneered Agnes, "no wonder he's ashamed to have her to live at Barford! What would his friends think of her—"
"It cannot concern you what my father's friends would think of my grandmother," Ann interposed, with a light in her grey eyes which warned Agnes she had said enough, "my grandmother is—but I will not discuss her with you! I always knew you to be a mean-spirited girl, but I never realised before to-day that you were so hopelessly vulgar and—and contemptible. In one breath almost you admitted your belief that Violet stole your purse and asked her into your house; you think it may be worth while to keep in with her if her father is going to be a successful man, and on that account you are ready to overlook an act which, if she had committed it, would have put her on a par with a common thief. Shame on you! I am beginning to understand you now, and I tell you plainly I wish to have nothing to do with you. I consider you are a girl to be avoided, and I am sure my friends agree with me."
Agnes winced perceptibly beneath the contempt with which Ann uttered these words, and, as soon as the latter had finished speaking, she quickly away, whilst the others, all very agitated, walked on for some distance in complete silence.
"You have made an enemy, Ann, I fear," said Violet at length.
"You fear?" echoed Ann; "why should you fear? I think Agnes Hosking is very like a nettle, she requires firm handling."
"She was abominably rude to you about your grandmother, Ann!" cried Ruth wrathfully, "and it is dreadful that she should still believe Vi stole her purse!"
"She judges Violet by her own standard," rejoined Ann, with a pitying glance at Violet's quivering face. "Perhaps I ought not to have said that," she went on, a moment later, "I have no right to suggest that, in any circumstances, she would be a thief. Don't make a grief of this unfortunate encounter of ours with Agnes, though, Violet; you must not be unhappy on your last day at home."
"No, indeed," agreed Ruth, "that will never do. 'Truth will out,' you know, dear Vi."