The rebellious tears well-nigh burst their bonds; but a strong will was throned within that shapely head. My lady turned angrily upon her niece; for though discomfited and prepared to run up a flag of truce, it was not to be expected that she should endure this last speech without resenting it. Miss Wolfe's pertness harrowed her proud soul. She had pretended to look on her aunt as in her dotage--a toothless harridan, with no distinguishing attribute except white hair, and had presumed to charge her with ridiculous motives; had torn the dazzling glamour of his rank from Shane, exposing to view a skin as shaggy as the ass's; even going so far as to stigmatise him to his doting mother as a drunkard and a murderer; and, to cap all, had wound up with patronising advice. An ordinary lady of middle age would resent such treatment; how much more then the stern Countess of Glandore, whose nature was toughened by contact with the fire, who was always regarded with awe-stricken terror when she deigned to honour any of the Castle festivities, and who was quite a terrifying personage even to the wives and daughters of contemporary grandees. Would the stubborn girl be true to her hasty vow? My lady feared she would, though for the moment she was too angry to consider calmly of it. Fierce wrath darted from under her squared brows; her high nose grew thinner; a network of small meshes twitched about her mouth; her long fingers tightly clutched the gold snuffbox which usually lay within them. Yet Miss Wolfe, having recovered her self-possession, looked sombrely at the frost-crowned volcano without a tremor. 'Doreen,' my lady said, 'if your father knew of you what I know, it would kill him; but I elect to hold my tongue, because I love my brother more than you your father. That you should be insolent to me is what I might expect; so I bear that with equanimity. Thank you for showing me how wrong I was in forming a Utopian scheme for joining my brother's child to Shane. We will say no more about that.' (Doreen heaved a sigh of relief.) 'The indelicacy of your proceedings has shown me that such a thing would be an insult to our name. What! a girl who corresponds clandestinely with a married man; who gallops like a trull about the country, regardless, not only of her own fair fame, but of her family's; who is on terms of familiar intercourse with a parcel of scatter-brained youths who make the capital of notoriety out of the jingle of sedition. Is this a girl to be received in respectable society? You spoke plainly; so do I. If I were to publish what I chance to know of you, no decent family would receive you within their doors. But I must bear with you for many reasons; your base mother's blood among the rest. You must be the skeleton in our cupboard. All I beg is, that you will rattle your bones less publicly.' Doreen's dark skin was mottled with pallor; her breath laboured; her lips formed words, yet no sound issued thence. At last she panted out: