"You are poor and lowly born, and your place is in the rooms of the servants, and—and—I thought you were a child," sputtered Lady Lancaster, unable to fence with the polished tools of her fair opponent, and continuing, incoherently: "What did you mean, anyway, by—by—"
"By being a tall, grown-up girl instead of a child?" interposed Leonora, allowing a soft little smile to flicker over her rosy lips. "Oh, Lady Lancaster, pray be reasonable! Could I help it, really? Can one turn back the hands of Time? If that were possible, surely you would have availed yourself long ago of that wondrous art;" and with a graceful little bow, Leonora walked deliberately out of the room, having fired this Parthian shot of delicate feminine spite into the camp of the astounded enemy.
Lady Lancaster was purple with rage and dismay. She had sallied upon the field ready to drive the intruder from her grounds, and she, Lady Lancaster, the great rich lady, had been vanquished by the sharp little tongue of a low-born girl who had so innocent and candid an air that she did not at this moment quite realize that the girl herself knew the enormity of the offense she had committed.
Elise, full of silent, demure laughter, waited for her mistress to speak.
It was several minutes before she rallied from her fit of rage enough to speak clearly. When she did, she said, sharply:
"Put me into a chair, Elise, and bring Mrs. West to me."
"Hadn't I better take you back to your room first? Perhaps some one may come in here. And you have pushed your wig awry, and the powder is all off your face, my lady," said Elise, demurely; and her mistress groaned:
"Take me back to my room, then, and tell West to come at once—at once, do you hear?"
And when she had regained the privacy of her own room she sunk down exhausted upon her bed to await the housekeeper's arrival.
Leonora had already gone to Mrs. West's room and related her adventure.