Such as she was the unknown scanned Mary with a kind of scornful amusement. “Oh,” she said, “so this is what they have made of Miss Vermuyden? Let me look at you, girl?” And laying her hands on Mary’s shoulders she looked long into the tearful, agitated face. “Why, you are like a sheet of paper!” she continued, raising the girl’s chin with her finger. “I wonder you dared to come with Sir Robert saying no! And, you little fool,” she continued in a swift spirit of irritation, “as soon not come at all, as look at me like that! You’ve got my chin and my nose, and more of me than I thought. But God knows where you got your hare’s eyes! Are you always frightened?” “No, Ma’am, no!” she stammered. “No, Ma’am? No, goose!” Lady Sybil retorted, mimicking her. “Why, ten kings on ten thrones had never made me shake as you are shaking! Nor twenty Sir Roberts in twenty passions! What is it you are afraid of? Being found with me?” “No!” Mary cried. And, to do her justice, the emotion with which Lady Sybil found fault was as much a natural agitation, on seeing her mother, as fear on her own account. “Then you are afraid of me?” Lady Sybil rejoined. And again she twitched the girl’s face to the light. Mary was amazed rather than afraid: but she could not say that. And she kept silence. “Or is it dislike of me?” the mother continued—a slight grimace, as of pain, distorting her face. “You hate me, I suppose? You hate me?” “Oh, no, no!” the girl cried in distress. “You do, Miss!” And with no little violence she pushed Mary from her. “You set down all to me, I suppose! I’ve kept you from your own, that’s it! I am the wicked mother, worse than a step-mother, who robbed you of your rights! And made a beggar of you and would have kept you a beggar! I am she who wronged you and robbed you—the unnatural mother! And you never ask,” she went on with fierce, impulsive energy, “what I suffered? How I was wronged! What I bore! No, nor what I meant to do—with you!” “Indeed, indeed——” “What I meant to do, I say!” Lady Sybil repeated violently. “At my death—and I am dying, but what is that to you?—all would have been told, girl! And you would have got your own. Do you believe me?” she added passionately, advancing a step in a manner almost menacing. “Do you believe me, girl?” “I do, I do!” Mary cried, inexpressibly pained by the other’s vehemence.