"You are a one, you are!" the emancipated servant said. "I ha' seen a sight o' bad 'uns, but never one like you. And if I was th' master, I'd up and chuck you inter th' street, see if I wouldn't, and git a little peace in 'is 'ome with a diff'runt woman than you! 'E wouldn't have to go far, neither, before 'e found one to 'is mind, master wouldn't, an' so I tell you! An' as for me, I'm done with you, so there!" The woman looked after her as she bounced to the door, hiccoughing, holding the now empty glass in her shaking hand. Her brows were knit; she seemed in her muddled brain to be considering something. "The girl Grantley promised she'd come to-day," she said. "She promised she'd bring me something." "And did so, right enough. But you 'aven't got no memory nor nothin'!" "Where is it, then, Maria dear? For my poor head's splitting----" "Why, in th' basket as stan' agin your sofy, where you put it yourself, for I see ye do it." Left to herself, the woman put the glass to her lips, sucked from it the few drops that hung upon its sides, lay with it in her hand, alternately looking into it and looking into space, lifting it to her lips again and again. The machinery of her mind was too far destroyed for it to work in any suggested groove. It strayed off the line continually into all sorts of hazy, dim byways. A disgrace! She had broken her word to him, often enough, but he had never before called her that. It was very cruel of him, and not like a husband to use such a word to his wife, that had ever a loving word for him when he came home, and was always waiting for him, so obliging and kind. Her mother would vouch for that--she had often said she had a loving nature. Once she had walked unexpectedly into the little sitting-room at home, and she had heard her mother saying to Horace--"Julia has a very loving nature." Why didn't her mother come and say kind things to her now? She was all alone. If her mother came and sat by her side-- She would like, if she could walk there, to get off the sofa and go to look for her in that little sitting-room, at home. It was so cool in there always, with the window open to the garden. There was a basket of violets on the table. She wondered if they were there now. She would like to put her lips, that were so hot and uncomfortable, down upon them-- With difficulty she half turned on the sofa with the idea of reaching them; but remembered as she did so that her mother had been dead for years and years, and that there were no violets now. She cried afresh, and held the empty glass to her lips in the hope a forgotten drop might trickle down upon them. Her mother had once scolded her--once when Horace had told tales--and had said that she had broken her heart. But, for all that, she would not have liked to hear her called a disgrace.