"I suppose he does, but save me from these preachers! Why, one of them came here the other day and would not be refused. He actually forced himself into my house. He had a poor family or something, he said, and he wanted me to undertake to support them. And when I came to find out, they were some of my own tenants who had positively refused to pay any rent, and had held on for months to one of my houses without paying me a penny." She had evidently forgotten that she had just said this a moment before. "I happened to remember," she added, "because my agent told me the man's name, O'Neil."
"McNeil!" exclaimed Miss Leigh. "Why, that is the name of my poor family!" She cut her eye over toward me with a quizzical sparkle in it.
"What! Well, you need not come to me about that man. My counsel said he was one of the worst characters he knew; a regular anarchist—one of these Irish—you know! And when I afterward tried to collect my rents, he got some upstart creature of a lawyer to try and defeat me, and actually did defraud me of my debt."
This was a centre shot for me, and I wondered what she would think if she ever found out who the upstart was. The perspiration began to start on my forehead. It was clear that I must get away. She was, however, in such a full sweep that I could not get in a word to say good-by.
"But I soon gave Mr. Marble, or whatever his name was, a very different idea of the way he should behave when he came to see a lady. I let him know that I preferred to manage my affairs and select my own objects of charity, without being dictated to by any one, and that I did not propose to help anarchists. And I soon gave Mr. McNeil to understand whom he had to deal with. I ordered him turned out at once—instantly." She was now addressing me.
She was so well satisfied with her position that I must have looked astonished, and I had not at first a word to say. This she took for acquiescence.
"That was, perhaps, the greatest piece of insolence I ever knew!" she continued. "Don't you think so?"
"Well, no, I do not," I said bluntly.
For a moment or so her face was a perfect blank, then it was filled with amazement. Her whole person changed. Her head went up—her eyes flashed, her color deepened.
"Oh!" she said. "Perhaps, we look at the matter from different standpoints?" rearing back more stiffly than ever.