Yes; it made her quieter, it calmed her down, it delivered her from that worst and deepest horror, to look at it through Mab’s sensible, quiet eyes. But when Lady William remembered that James would tolerate her, and be kind, and that everybody else would say, ‘Poor Emily!’ the intolerableness of the catastrophe caught her once more--and the advantage which even her brother even James, who loved her in his way, who would spare no trouble for her, had taken of it already. While there was a shade, while there was a shadow of a doubt upon her, she must not admit Leo Swinford ‘for all our sakes.’ Women do not habitually swear, or I think Lady William would have used bad words, had she known any, when this intolerable recollection came into her mind, just as, if she had not been bound by the inevitable bonds of education and natural self-control, she might have broken the china or the furniture to relieve herself. A gentlewoman cannot do either of these things, fortunately, or unfortunately, for her, and they are outlets which must sometimes be of use. But the quick movement with which she dashed her hands together when that last thought came into her mind, upset a little table upon which was a plant, one of Mab’s especial nurslings just shaping for flower, as well as various other nicknacks of less importance. The sense of guilt and shame with which she saw what she had done, the compunction with which she stooped over the broken flower-pot, and gathered up the fortunately uninjured plant, and the specially prepared soil in which it had been placed, and which was but dirt to Patty, who came dashing in at the sound of the crash to set matters right--did Lady William as much good as smashing a window or two might have done to a poor woman out of Society. She was very penitent and much ashamed of herself, and horribly amused all the same. To express her rage, her injured feelings, her pride and desperation, by breaking a flower-pot, was again where bathos and ridicule came in. ‘I’ll sweep it all up, my lady,’ cried Patty, ‘and there won’t be no harm.’ ‘Miss Mab’s leaf-mould? No, you shan’t do anything of the kind. Find me another flower-pot, and let us gather it all up carefully, and put it back.’ ‘Miss Mab’s full of fads,’ said Patty, under her breath. But Lady William did not allow herself such freedom of criticism, and she had scarcely gathered up the mould and built it securely round the plant in the new pot before Mab came in. ‘Oh, are you filling it up with fresh mould, mother?. My poor auricula! It will never produce a prize bloom now, and I had such hopes.’ ‘You ungrateful child! when I have gathered up every scrap of your famous mould with my own dirty hands!’ ‘Poor mother,’ cried Mab, ‘that can never bear to dirty her hands! let me see them.’