went away strangely puzzled, and not a little disgusted with himself.
She expected to find that Stuyvesant had carried out his threat to vilify her, and was prepared for a bitter ten minutes with the outraged mistress of the house, who would hardly let her escape without a severe lacing. She would be dismissed without a "character."
She packed her boxes and the two or three hand-bags that had come over from London with her. A heightened colour was in her cheeks, and there was a repelling gleam in her blue eyes. She was wondering whether she could keep herself in hand during the tirade. Her temper was a hot one.
A not distant Irish ancestor occasionally got loose in her blood and played havoc with the strain inherited from a whole regiment of English forebears. On such occasions, she flared up in a fine Celtic rage, and then for days afterwards was in a penitential mood that shamed the poor old Irish ghost into complete and grovelling subjection.
What she saw in the mirror over her dressing-table warned her that if she did not keep a pretty firm grip tonight on the throat of that wild Irishman who had got into the family-tree ages before the twig represented by herself appeared, Mrs. Smith-Parvis was reasonably certain to hear from him. A less captious observer, leaning over her shoulder, would have taken an entirely different view of the reflection. He (obviously he) would have pronounced it ravishing.
Promptly at seven she entered the library. To her dismay, Mrs. Smith-Parvis was not alone. Her husband was there, and also Stuyvesant. If her life had
