The following morning, during recreation, when I went into the schoolroom to get a book which I had left, I found Miss Frazer crouching over her desk, not only what I should call crying, but positively bellowing into her pocket-handkerchief. I stared at her in astonishment. "Miss Frazer! What is the matter?" She bellowed on. A thought occurred to me. "Has--has anyone been treating you badly?" Since she was so taciturn when calm, I expected her to be dumb when torn by her emotions. But I was mistaken. Taking her handkerchief from before her streaming eyes--her spectacles lay on the top of the desk, and I noticed how comical she looked without them--she spluttered out,-- "I'm the worst treated woman in the whole world!" "Someone has been making you unhappy?" "Cruelly, wickedly unhappy!" "But have you no one to whom you can go for advice and assistance?" "Not a single creature! Not a living soul! I am helpless! It is because I am helpless that I am trampled on." Trampled on? I recalled Hetty's words. So she had been trampled on. Was being trampled on at that very moment. My blood, as usual, began to boil. Here was still another forlorn woman who had fallen a helpless victim to what Lord Byron called the "divine fever." And so a Frenchman did think that he could kick an Englishwoman about as if she were a football! I jumped at my conclusions with an ease and a rapidity which set all my pulses glowing. "Do you think that it would make any difference if anyone spoke for you?" "It must make a difference; it must! It is impossible that it should not make a difference! But who is there who would speak for me? Not one being on the earth!" Was there not? There she was mistaken, as she should see. But I did not tell her so. Indeed, she must have thought me also lacking in that rare human sympathy, the absence of which she mourned in others, because I hurried out of the schoolroom without another word. To be entirely frank, I was more than half afraid. Unattractive enough in her normal condition, she was absolutely repulsive in her woe. Had I dared I would have advised her, strongly, never under any circumstances to cry. But had I done so I might have wounded her sensitive nature still more deeply. She might have started boohooing with still greater vehemence. Then what would she have looked like? And what would have happened to me?