When she reached home she dressed in one of her sumptuous gowns, for a score of country neighbours were coming to meet Jane Erskine as the fiancée of her son. Her maid bore the brunt of my lady's sarcasm during the time of dressing, and was given a curt notice of dismissal before the toilet was complete. The woman's big round eyes, which were so obnoxious to her mistress, filled with tears as she accepted her discharge. And Mrs. Ogilvie, descending the broad staircase of the house with her air of magnificence, her jewels, and her red hair, rapped her fan suddenly and sharply on the palm of her hand, so that the delicate tortoise-shell sticks were broken. 'Why does she look at me like that?' she said fiercely below her breath. 'I am glad I dismissed her, and I am glad she cried! Why should not some one else suffer as well as I?'

'You are not really tiresome, Jane,' she said after dinner, as the two sat together on a couch. 'I have never known another engaged young lady whom I did not avoid; but you are distressing yourself quite unnecessarily about me. When I look tired, for instance, you may take it as a sure sign that I am bored; nothing ever really makes me feel ill except dullness.'

'Still,' urged Jane, 'Peter and I want it so much. We think if you were to get advice from a doctor it would make us feel so much happier about you.'

'I never allow any one to discuss my health with me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie coldly; 'it is only a polite way of pointing out to one that one is looking plain.'

Jane took one of her hands in hers with an impulsive gesture, and printed a kiss upon it.

'Do sit upon me when I begin to bore you or to say the wrong thing! I believe, for a woman, I am quite unpardonably clumsy and tactless.'

'Have you ever discovered,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, 'that tact is becoming a little overdone, and that it generally succeeds in accentuating a difficult situation, or in making it impossible? Women are horribly tactful as a rule, and that is why men's society is preferable to theirs. If you tread on a man's foot he will no doubt forgive you, while admitting that the blow was painful; but a woman smiles and tries to look as though she really enjoyed it.'

'Promise never to endure me in silence,' said Jane, laughing, 'even when I am most tactless!'

'Silent endurance is hardly my character,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, screwing up her eyes. 'I dismissed Forder before dinner because she annoyed me.'

'Please take Forder to your heart again tomorrow morning,' said Jane; 'she keeps Martin in such a good temper.'