Lord Otford flushed angrily. Here was he, a great nobleman with a grievance, and this totally insignificant woman was treating him like a child! He spoke with some warmth. "I beg your pardon! What I have to say is of the utmost consequence." "I shall be surprised," said Madame—"and I am waiting." Lord Otford was still fuming. Her manner was really most disconcerting. "You—you make it somewhat difficult, ma’am," he blustered. Nothing could stir her calmness. "Then why give yourself the trouble?" she said; and again moved as if to go. "Pray wait!" cried he, hastily. All the fine outworks of sarcasm and irony which he had elaborately prepared against this meeting had vanished before the icy blast of her imperturbable coolness. He was hot; he was uncomfortable. He could only stammer, "The fact is—my foolish son—" Madame held up a delicate hand and stopped him. "Ah!" she said, with a well-bred rebuke of his excitement, "I can spare you any further discomfort. Your son forced his acquaintance on my daughter in my absence a week ago. Be assured we are willing to overlook his lack of manners. The circumstance need not be further alluded to." Here was a nice thing! In those few words she had turned the tables on him. Instead of metaphorically grovelling in the dust at his feet and entreating his pardon, she had become the accuser, and he now found himself forced to speak on the defensive. "It must be alluded to! I must explain!" he cried. "No explanation or apology is required," she went on implacably, "since under no circumstances shall we allow the acquaintance to continue." Was he on his head or his heels? These were practically the very words he had meant to use. This was the shell he had meant to hurl into the enemy’s camp, and here it was, exploding under his own feet! "But my son has pledged his word to come again, and—" Again she interrupted him. "Make yourself easy on that score," she said; and now there was even a note of contempt in her voice. "He has broken his word." "That was my doing!" cried Lord Otford, almost apologetically. "I persuaded him to wait a week. I regret to say he means to come to-day." "Well," answered Madame, with the utmost indifference, "Pomander Walk is public, and we cannot prevent him." "But he ’ll see your daughter!" "I think not. Unless he breaks into the house." "Upon my soul, I believe he ’ll go that length!" What Lord Otford had intended should be a menace, turned to an appeal. "That is where I ask for your co-operation." Madame looked him up and down with indignant protest. Really, he might have been poor Snooks. "Pardon me," she said, "not co-operation." She drew herself up and her eyes flashed. "But I shall defend my own." She laid a peculiar stress on the word "defend," which arrested his attention. "’Defend’?" said he, with amazement. "What do you mean?"