"It's no use, milady," she said, replacing a little cushion under her elbow. "You're down, and I'm up, and you've got to make up your mind to it. Harry told me you'd got it out of him. Are you any the happier for knowing I'm your daughter-in-law? I'd meant to spare you that. It was that as brought on the stroke. Very clever you were to wheedle it out of Harry, but it didn't do you much good. You'd turn me out without a character if you could, wouldn't you? But you can't. And listen to me. You won't ever be any better, or I shouldn't talk like this. I dare say I'm pretty bad, but I'd never say there wasn't a chance while there was the least little scrap of one left. But there isn't, not one scrap. It's all over with your high and mighty ways, and riding rough-shod over everybody, and poor Miss Manvers. It's no use crying. You've made others cry often enough. Now it's your turn. And don't go and think I'm going to be cruel to you because you've been cruel to others. I'm not. I'm sorry enough for you, lying there like a log, eating your heart out. I'm going to make you as comfortable as ever I can, and to do my duty by you. And when you're gone I'm going to make Harry happier than he's ever been under your thumb. So now you understand." Lady Louisa understood. Her eyes, terrible, fierce as a wounded panther's, filled with tears. She made no other sign. The nurse wiped them away. CHAPTER XXI "The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it."--GEORGE ELIOT. The Vicarage is within a stone's throw of the Dower House. On this particular afternoon Mr. and Miss Black were solemnly seated opposite each other at tea, and Mr. Black was ruefully reflecting, as he often did at meal-times, on his sister's incapacity as a housekeeper. We sometimes read in the biographies of eminent men how trains and boats always eluded those distinguished personages, in spite of their pathetic eagerness to overtake them; how their luggage and purses and important papers fled from them; how their empty chairs too frequently represented them on state occasions. Miss Black was not eluded by such bagatelles as trains and omnibuses, but by things of greater importance, by new-laid eggs, and fresh butter, and cottage loaves. No egg until it was of advanced middle age would come within a mile of Miss Black. The whole village was aware that old Purvis sold her "potted eggs" at "new-laid" prices, and that she never detected the lime on them. Scones and tea-cakes and loaves with "kissing crust" remained obdurately huddled in the baker's cart at the Vicarage back door. All that ever found their way into the house were those unappropriated blessings, those emotionless rectangular travesties of bread called "tin loaves." Coffee and Miss Black were not on speaking terms. After years of deadly enmity she had relinquished the fruitless struggle, and gave her brother coffee essence instead for breakfast--two spoonfuls to a cup of tepid milk.