She who never had been served sought to refuse the offices of this quondam great lady. On Earth no one had drawn up the morning shades for her, she declared; had brushed the cobwebs of dreams from her lashes with dampened cloths; had proffered the steaming beauty cup, perfumed her bath, placed her mules, held her robe. No need was there for Adeline to suffer while under assignment to her. She was ill-repaid for her kindly intent. “It is, then, as I feared. Madame is but one of them herself.” With contemptuous manner, m’lady-who-was insisted upon performing those duties which she knew so well from having exacted them. “I must serve you,” she explained, “whether you wish to be served or not. I must work out my sentence. None dares tamper with the Rule of the Realm of Reversals. My husband warns me----” “Your husband? Are you so fortunate as to have his company here?” A moment the maid contemplated the eagerness on her new mistress’ face, then gave a vicious twist to the mass of dark hair she was arranging. “That he received a red ticket is the one bit of justice I have found in Greater Gehenna. He bungled the trick of obtaining that verdict in man’s favor usually granted gratis by the world.” “You speak, Adeline, as though you hated him.” “Hate him?” Fury shook the cultured voice. “Is it not because of him that I am here? And he--always he seeks me at the fête of servant-fiends to complain of the humiliations forced upon him by his ex-valet, for well he knows that his only chance of reversal will come through me. Since Madame is so good as to inquire, I do hate the man I loved. I hate him the more, perhaps, for controlling his hate of me--for his pretense of continued love.” To Dolores, the strange creature’s will to hurt her by twisting her hair was kind compared with this unintentional squeezing of the hope-drops from her heart. Would every one about the court have power to make her suffer for her past? When he whose companionship the lost soul of her craved so unutterably should one day be sentenced to this realm for their common social crime, would he also hide hate in a pretense still to love? But no. Although on Earth John had not sought her as had other men and at the last had seemed to desert, she dared not believe that the great heart of him could change when he came through the gate into the Lower Land--when, one day, he joined her. The mother-soul’s good-morning to her babe was interrupted by a message from the King. She was to attend him at once in the Garden of Bad Luck. Dismay possessed Dolores. Probably His Majesty meant to probe deeper, with his knife-like cynicisms of last night, into the wounds of her former state. But a thought of the folly of foreboding soon steadied her. She had no choice. “I shall go at once,” she told the maid. “I feel quite rested and strong.”