“Now that I have said this, I will just warn you that if you try to make Arthur think badly of me, to separate him from me (which you can’t do, however you may try), that I will keep him separate from you. If you are fond of him, you will have to be civil to me, you and Miss Lucy, grand ladies though you are. You think me no better than the dirt below your feet; but if you do not treat me as I ought to be treated, I will keep Arthur from you, so that you shall never see him again. I have the power to do it, not like you, who have no power. He can do without his mother, but he can’t do without me. I think it is honest to tell you this, because he insisted I was to write to you--I shouldn’t have written to you of myself--and because I mean to come back home to England and settle at Underhayes, to be near my people, who have always been (not like you) kind to him as well as to me. So that now, my lady, you know exactly what I mean, you and Miss Lucy, and what I will do. “ANNA FRANCES CURTIS.” Lady Curtis was flushed and agitated; her eyes blazed hotly over her crimson cheeks. “Was ever anyone so insolent?” she said, and bit her lip to keep from crying, altogether overwhelmed by the unexpected insult. “Oh, mamma, the girl does not mean it!” cried Lucy, distressed, trying to take the letter. It was bad enough to read it once, but to read it as she knew her mother would do, over and over again, feeling the enormity ever greater, would be terrible. Lucy put out her hand for it, to take it away. “I will not give it you, Lucy. I know what you mean to do; to put it in the fire that I may forget it, and think it is not half so bad.” “No, mamma; but why should you dwell upon it? She wrote it hastily. See, there is haste in every line; but we will read it at leisure, and go over it again and again. She is so uninstructed, so inexperienced; and there is a kind of savage justice in it, if you will but think, mamma.” “How dare you say so?” cried Lady Curtis, in whose mind the immediate pain and hurt received were too violent to be thus smoothed away, and who was as little able for the moment to inquire into the absolute justice of the matter as Nancy herself. The tears began to glisten in her eyes, tears of genuine suffering. “This is what our children bring us,” she said; “they for whom we are ready to make any sacrifice--insult, the flaunting in our face of some poor creature, surely, surely not worth as much as his mother was to him, Lucy; not worth you--_you_, my child; of that I may be sure at least; and his home, and all that was worth having in life--” And some scalding drops fell on her hands in a hot and sudden shower. Tears do not last at Lady Curtis’ age; they cost too much; only a sharp stab like this could bring them, hasty and unwilling, from her eyes. “I know it is hard, very hard; but, mamma--”