"She is up still, sir."
"I must see her to-night. Will you tell her that I want to speak to her very particularly."
"Yes, sir."
"What have you been crying about?" asked Rupert suddenly, but the girl turned her head away and made no answer.
"Has Mrs. Mortomley been scolding you?" he persisted. At this question Esther broke down altogether.
"It—it—is—th—first time my—mistress ever spoke cross to me, sir—," she sobbed.
"Well, you needn't allow that fact to vex you," Rupert answered, "for if things go on as they have been doing, you may be very sure it will not be the last. Now go and give her my message, and you will sleep all the better for seeing your mistress again. Depend upon it, she is far more sorry than you by this time."
"What a spit-fire temper Dolly is developing," thought the young man, looking uneasily into the blazing fire. "Though it is rather turning the proprieties upside down, I fear I must lecture my aunt," but when Mrs. Mortomley came into the room there was an expression on her face which changed his intention.
She had taken off the elaborate dress in which he last beheld her, and exchanged it for a dressing-gown of brilliant scarlet, confined round the waist by a belt of its own material, and showing, in every fold and plait which hung loosely about her figure, how the plump shapeliness which once needed no padding, no adventitious assistance from her dressmaker, had changed to leanness and angles.
She had unloosed her hair, she had taken away the great pads and enormous frizettes in which her soul once found such pleasure, and the straight locks fell over her shoulders in a manner as natural as it was unwonted.