The door was opened by a man, who showed them up stairs and announced their names. Sheila's heart beat quickly. She entered the drawing-room with a sort of mist before her eyes, and found herself going forward to a lady who sat at the farther end. She had a strangely vivid impression, amid all her alarm, that this old lady looked like the withered kernel of a nut. Or was she not like a cockatoo? It was through no anticipation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that the imagination of the girl got hold of that notion. But the little old lady held her head like a cockatoo. She had the hard, staring, observant and unimpressionable eyes of a cockatoo. What was there, moreover, about the decorations of her head that reminded one of a cockatoo when it puts up its crest and causes its feathers to look like sticks of celery? "Aunt Caroline, this is my wife." "I am glad to see you, dear," said the old lady, giving her hand, but not rising. "Sit down. When you are a little nervous you ought to sit down. Frank, give me that ammonia from the mantelpiece." It was a small glass phial, and labeled "Poison." She smelt the stopper, and then handed it to Sheila, telling her to do the same. "Why did your maid do your hair in such a way?" she asked suddenly. "I haven't got a maid," said Sheila, "and I always do my hair so." "Don't be offended. I like it. But you must not make a fool of yourself. Your hair is too much that of a country beauty going to a ball. Paterson will show you how to do your hair." "Oh, I say, aunt," cried Lavender with a fine show of carelessness, "you mustn't go and spoil her hair. I think it is very pretty as it is, and that woman of yours would simply go and make a mop of it. You'd think the girls now-a-days dressed their hair by shoving their head into a furze bush and giving it a couple of turns." She paid no heed to him, but turned to Sheila and said, "You are an only child?" "Yes." "Why did you leave your father?" The question was rather a cruel one, and it stung Sheila into answering bravely, "Because my husband wished me." "Oh. You think your husband is to be the first law of your life?" "Yes, I do." "Even when he is only silly Frank Lavender?" Sheila rose. There was a quivering of her lips, but no weakness in the proud, indignant look of her eyes: "What you may say of me, that I do not care. But I will not remain to hear my husband insulted." "Sheila," said Lavender, vexed and anxious, and yet pleased at the same time by the courage of the girl--"Sheila, it is only a joke. You must not mind: it is only a bit of fun." "I do not understand such jests," she said calmly.