Then she rang the bell. When the footman appeared he was told to remove the broken glass. Everything was done quietly; there was not the faintest trace of displeasure on Lady Anne's face; but any girl who reads this can well imagine my feelings. Talk of being hot! I thought I should never need furs again as long as I lived. The soft pussy-cats, dear pets, no longer comforted me. I removed the chinchilla, and sat with blazing cheeks gazing straight before me. But Lady Anne was nothing if she was not kind. "So you are going to school next week?" she said. "And to Paris? You will enjoy that." "Oh yes," I murmured. I really had not a vestige of character left; I could only mutter--I, who felt myself to be a person of great energy and determination and force of speech. "It was very kind of Mrs Grant to arrange it all for you." "Very kind," I said, loathing Mrs Grant as I uttered the words. Lady Anne stared at me. Her eyebrows went up the very least bit in the world. "Ah! here comes tea," she said. A footman appeared with a tray. A little table opened of its own accord in some extraordinary way. It had looked like a harmless bundle of sticks leaning against one of the walls. The tray, one of rarest china, was placed upon it. Lady Anne poured thimblefuls of weak tea into cups of matchless china. I was trembling all over. I was actually so nervous that I was sure I should break one of those cups if I touched it. But I did take it, nevertheless; I took this terrible thimbleful in its beautiful little saucer in my gloved hand, and sat down and received a plate of the same type to rest on my lap with an infinitesimal morsel of wafery bread-and-butter. The tea was scalding hot, and it brought tears to my eyes. I felt so bewildered and upset that it was with difficulty I could keep myself from making an ignominious bolt from the room. But worse was to follow. Lady Anne and my step-mother continued to talk as placidly together as though nothing whatever had happened, as though I had not disgraced myself for ever and ever, when the door was flung open and a perfect swarm of gaily dressed ladies appeared. I think there were five of them. They made the silent room alive all at once, each talking a little higher and more rapidly than the other. One rushed up to Lady Anne and called her an old dear, and kissed her and patted her cheek; another tapped her with her lorgnette and said, "You naughty old thing, why weren't you at the bazaar yesterday? Oh, we had such fun!" Then they all sat down, spreading out their garments and seeming to preen themselves like lovely tropical birds. I pushed my chair a little farther from the fire, which had caught my cheeks and made them burn in a most terrible manner. When would my step-mother go? But no, she had no intention of stirring. She knew these people; they were quite interested on seeing her.