Alice's chin alone made reply. She waited the fitting moment, with splendour to astonish, and with grandeur to subdue her lover. To tell the sad truth, she was no longer sure that it would be well to encourage him on the old footing; was she not standing on tiptoe, her skirts in her hand, on the brink of the brook that parted serfdom from gentility, on the point of stepping daintily across, and leaving domestic slavery, red hands, caps, and obedience behind her? How then was she to marry a man that had black nails, and smelt of glue? It was incumbent on her at least, for propriety's sake, to render him at once aware that it was in condescension ineffable she took any notice of him. "Alice, my girl!" began John again, in expostulatory tone. "Miss Cox, if you please, John Jephson," interposed Alice. "What on 'arth's come over you?" exclaimed John, with the first throb of rousing indignation. "But if you ain't your own self no more, why, Miss Cox be it. 'T seems to me 's if I warn't my own self no more--'s if I'd got into some un else, or 't least hedn't got my own ears on m' own head.--Never saw or heerd Alice like this afore!" he added, turning in gloomy bewilderment to the housemaid for a word of human sympathy. The movement did not altogether please Alice, and she felt she must justify her behaviour. "You see, John," she said, with dignity, keeping her back towards him, and pretending to dust the globe of a lamp, "there's things as no woman can help, and therefore as no man has no right to complain of them. It's not as if I'd gone an' done it, or changed myself, no more 'n if it 'ad took place in my cradle. What can I help it, if the world goes and changes itself? Am _I_ to blame?--tell me that. It's not that. I make no complaint, but I tell you it ain't me, it's circumstances as is gone and changed theirselves, and bein' as circumstances is changed, things ain't the same as they was, and Miss is the properer term from you to me, John Jephson." "Dang it if I know what you're a drivin' at, Alice!--Miss Cox!--and I beg yer pardon, miss, I'm sure.--Dang me if I do!" "Don't swear, John Jephson--leastways before a lady. It's not proper." "It seems to me, Miss Cox, as if the wind was a settin' from Bedlam, or may be Colney Hatch," said John, who was considered a humourist among his comrades. "I wouldn't take no liberties with a lady, Miss Cox; but if I might be so bold as to arst the joke of the thing--" "Joke, indeed!" cried Alice. "Do you call a dead uncle and ten thousand pounds a joke?" "God bless me!" said John. "You don't mean it, Alice?" "I do mean it, and that you'll find, John Jephson. I'm goin' to bid you good-bye to-morrer." "Whoy, Alice!" exclaimed honest John, aghast. "It's truth I tell ye," said Alice. "And for how long?" gasped John, fore-feeling illimitable misfortune.