She looked at the gaudy plates and jars; then thought of the delicate family china which was locked away in the little closet leading out of the keeping-room. She looked at the red and yellow brackets, the ornaments, and then looked round at the distempered walls, against which stood the beautiful golden oak, every piece of which she had tended as if it were a child. Every week she had rubbed that oak with beeswax and turpentine. Every week she had washed the china bowls and figures on the shelf. Every week for more than thirty years! She knew now that the landmarks of those years were going to be swept away. Her face grew harsh and vindictive--the face of a worn old panther--worn, old, feeble, but still with claws. Pamela, who meant everything in the kindest spirit possible, and who never doubted that her efforts would be received with gratitude, was breeding tragedy. Gainah, in the upright chair, her mournful eyes roving sluggishly round the ancestral furniture that she loved, was working up to a climax. Why should this girl--this pert jade, this strange cousin on the mother’s side--ruin the lives of her elders? Why should she sneer at rustic customs which were old enough to be as sacred as the Bible? Gainah’s mental attitude changed from injury to rebellion. She began to ask herself stupidly, with an agonized questioning of her slow brain, if Pamela could not be got rid of, banished from Folly Corner. How should she lift from the farm the shadow thrown across it? She only wanted to serve her master in her old faithful way, according to her own lights. She had brought him up from his birth. She almost believed that she was his mother. She had even chosen his wife for him. Nancy Turle wouldn’t have taken the housekeeping keys. She clutched at them as they weighed down her apron pocket. Pamela should never take them either. Nancy Turle would never have spent money like water at Liddleshorn. She glowered at the brightly colored stuffs and crockery. Only to go on serving him until the end. Wasn’t that a simple thing to ask? Just to be allowed to save and screw, to manage the farmhouse and to manage him in her hectoring way, which was all tenderness and devotion at bottom. She got up, turned her back on the new purchases, and ran her hand along the heavy sideboard lovingly, as if it were alive. CHAPTER IV.