"Then what satisfies Mr. Barton does not satisfy me. I find it impossible to reconcile your very mysterious behaviour with an absence of mystery in your life. You lock your bedroom door, and write letters to mysterious people of whom I know nothing, and you are intimate--far too intimate--with Mr. Barton himself, for that matter. I speak only for your good." "If, as you suggest, we are to remain friendly until I go, I think you had better not speak at all," replied Miriam coldly. "Miss Crane, this insolence----" "Had better come to an end--so I think. You will observe, Mrs. Darrow, that hitherto I have treated you with scrupulous politeness, and I demand the same in return. Whether I go or stay is a matter of complete indifference to me, but I decline absolutely to put up with impertinence from you. Any further interference with my private affairs, and I complain to Mr. Barton--either that, or you behave properly to me, and I remain till the end of the month, as you wish. I don't think that leaves much room for misunderstanding, Mrs. Darrow. At least, there is no need to continue this very undignified wrangling." And Miriam, with her head in the air, walked out of the room. "Miss Crane, come back!--I insist--I command!" screeched Mrs. Darrow, like an angry parrot. But Miriam paid no heed, and the worsted one was constrained to take refuge in tears. "To be treated so in my own house!" she wept, "and by one of the lower orders, too! Bad woman--and red-haired minx that she is!" But all Mrs. Darrow's expletives could not alter the situation. If she turned Miriam out of the house, as she would have dearly loved to do, there would be trouble with her uncle; and if, on the other hand, she kept her for the month, she would have to treat her civilly, since Miss Crane did not--as she put it--know her place; the word "place" being construed by Mrs. Darrow to mean a capacity for swallowing meekly as much of her bullying and bad temper as she might choose to indulge in. And as for this Miriam showed no kind of aptitude, she perforce had to make up her mind to the inevitable. So she went to bed, and dosed herself with a wondrous mixture of the combined "bromides," and brooded over her wrongs. She was a spiteful and malicious woman, with an element of hysteria thrown in, and she would freely have given a year of her life to do Miriam an injury. For the next few days she kept a cat-like watch on her. Possessed of a trifle more brain power she might have been dangerous. But, as it was, she inclined more to that peculiar class of cantankerous and neurotic female for whom the ducking-stool was surely designed.