But Miss Primrose was in one of her most exalted moods--"On her high hobby-horse," as the Crabapple Blossoms used to call it. So she merely glittered at Dame Marigold contemptuously out of her little eyes, and, with a lordly wave of her hand, as if to sweep away from her all mundane trivialities, she exclaimed pityingly, "My poor blind Marigold! Perhaps of all the pupils who have passed through my hands you are the one who are the least worthy of your noble birthright." Dame Marigold bit her lip, raised her eyebrows, and said in a low voice of intense irritation, "What do you mean, Miss Primrose?" Miss Primrose cast her eyes up to the ceiling, and, in her most treacly voice she answered, "The great privilege of having been born a woooman!" Her pupils always maintained that "woman," as pronounced by Miss Primrose, was the most indecent word in the language. Dame Marigold's eyes flashed: "I may not be a woman, but, at any rate, I am a mother--which is more than you are!" she retorted. Then, in a voice that at each word grew more indignant, she said, "And, Miss Primrose, do you consider that you yourself have been 'worthy of your noble birthright' in betraying the trust that has been placed in you? Are vice and horror and disgrace and breaking the hearts of parents 'true womanliness' I should like to know? You are worse than a murderer--ten times worse. And there you sit, gloating over what you have done, as if you were a martyr or a public benefactor--as complacent and smug and misunderstood as a princess from the moon forced to herd goats! I do really believe...." But Miss Primrose's shrillness screamed down her low-toned indignation: "Shake me! Stick pins in me! Fling me into the Dapple!" she shrieked. "I will bear it all with a smile, and wear my shame like a flower given by him!" Dame Marigold groaned in exasperation: "Who, on earth, do you mean by 'him', Miss Primrose?" Then her irrepressible sense of humour broke out in a dimple, and she added: "Duke Aubrey or Endymion Leer?" For, of course, Prunella had told her all the jokes about the goose and the sage. At this question Miss Primrose gave an unmistakable start; "Duke Aubrey, of course!" she answered, but the look in her eyes was sly, suspicious, and distinctly scared. None of this was lost upon Dame Marigold. She looked her slowly up and down with a little mocking smile; and Miss Primrose began to writhe and to gibber. "Hum!" said Dame Marigold, meditatively. She had never liked the smell of Endymion Leer's personality. The recent crisis had certainly done him no harm. It had doubled his practice, and trebled his influence. Besides, it cannot have been Miss Primrose's beauty and charms that had caused him to pay her recently such marked attentions. At any rate, it could do no harm to draw a bow at a venture.