You may be a beauty, and you may be the lawful wife of an English peer, but it is difficult to keep your dignity when you are turned out of a shop by a miserable working-woman as if you were the last of the last. Only by doing murder on her offender could the notorious Lady Sanquhar, who had been once the respected wife of an honest Spanish merchant, have redeemed the situation from utter ignominy. But as she could not do murder in actual fact, she only did it with her eyes, as, swaying more than ever, she went forth. Pamela shut the door; the four assistants stared at her with one accord. They had not known such an exciting morning for a long time. “Upon my word, Miss Pounce,” said Polly Popple, “you take a deal upon yourself, you do.” Pamela sat down, rather white about the lips, breathing quickly through dilated nostrils. “If it had got known that I’d sold as much as a feather to that creature,” she said, “Madame Mirabel might as well put up her shutters, for there’s not a lady of quality would have crossed the threshold of her showroom again.” CHAPTER XII IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY INSISTS ON THE DUTY OF MORALITY. “If you please, my Lady, might I speak to your Ladyship?” My Lady Kilcroney looked up from the sorrows of Miss Clarissa Harlowe, which she was particularly enjoying, and gazed at her handmaiden. Lydia Pounce and her mistress had gone through, together, so many emotions, intrigues, quarrels, reconciliations, triumphs, and despairs that it was scarcely too much to say they had become indispensable to each other. Therefore, too, both had grown to read each other’s countenances with the utmost facility. Now, Lydia was pale and pinched; her knobby little hands were clasping each other fiercely across her neat waistband; she was visibly trembling. Lady Kilcroney knew these symptoms. “What is to do, Lydia?” “Ho, my Lady!” The Abigail here clutched at her heart and turned up her eyes. “Dear me, Lydia,” said her Ladyship, tartly, “have they ventured to laugh again in the pantry as you happened to be passing, or has anyone broken into the safe and stolen my diamonds?” “Ho, your Ladyship, you may well ask. Heaven knows I’m prepared from this out to be the laughing-stock of this house. Everyone may point the finger of scorn at me. The name of Pounce is for ever blasted! As for thieves, my Lady, there are worse thieves than will ever be hanged walking about this moment, and treasures stolen of value far above diamonds!” “Dear me!” “Her Ladyship wouldn’t be so easy with her ‘dear me’s’ if she knew what’s happened. ’Tis gospel truth, my Lady, and I’m telling no falsehood, that the thought of having to inform your Ladyship is the bitterest part of the sorrow that has come upon me this day!” Kitty Kilcroney put down her book. Seeing that her maid’s eyes were genuinely tear-stained, and that the convulsive shiverings were not all assumed, she began to feel concern.