"Amused!" repeated Mrs. Lascelles, growing warm. "This is no question of amusement. It is a life's happiness or misery for two people who ought never to have been interfered with. You have no right to supplant her; you have no right to trifle with _him_!" "Suppose I am _not_ trifling," retorted the other. "Suppose I am in earnest, just for once, by way of change. You have complimented me on my powers, in sport. Do you think I should be a less dangerous enemy, Rose, if I were fighting for my life?" "You remember our agreement," exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles with rising colour, and a shake in her voice, denoting wrath no less than a nervous dread of its indulgence. "You are not acting fairly by me; you're not acting fairly by any of us. If you turn round now, after what you've told me, after what we agreed, I can never trust you again, Jin. I shall think you've been sailing under false colours all through." "Explain yourself, Rose," said Miss Ross, very quietly, but with an ominously steady expression about the lower part of her face, in strong contrast with the quivering lips and tremulous chin of her companion. "You ought to see it yourself," whimpered the latter, now in a sore predicament between her feelings of friendship and generosity. "I shall say something to be sorry for afterwards. I know I shall. You'll drive me to it, Jin! and when I am driven, I can't and won't stop!" "You seem to expect that my thoughts, feelings, and opinions are to be under your control, as you would have my actions and conversation," was the grave and rather stern rejoinder. "This is not dependence, Mrs. Lascelles, but slavery. You are not only unkind, but unreasonable and unjust." Mrs. Lascelles turned very red. She was now obviously "driven," as she called it, and not likely to stop. "What I expect," she retorted, "is nothing to the purpose; for there seems little chance of my obtaining it. What I _insist_ on is common propriety of demeanour and the merest fair-play. You would never have met these people at all--you would never have been in a position to know any one of them, but for _me_. You are received amongst them as--as--like anybody else, and you throw down the apple of discord to set us all at sixes and sevens. You seem to forget, Miss Ross, that your victims are my personal friends."