Ryder called it "yellow stuff" down in the kitchen; that was one comfort, but a feeble one; the sun came in at the lady's window, and Ryder's shapely hand was overflowed, and her eyes offended, by waves of burnished gold: and one day Griffith came in and kissed it in her very hand. His lips felt nothing but his wife's glorious hair; but, by that exquisite sensibility which the heart can convey in a moment to the very finger-nails, Caroline's hand, beneath, felt the soft touch through her mistress's hair; and the enamored hypocrite thrilled, and then sickened. The other servants knew, as a matter of domestic history, that Griffith and Kate lived together a happy couple; but this ardent prude was compelled by her position to see it, and realize it, every day. She had to witness little conjugal caresses, and they turned her sick with jealousy. She was Nobody. They took no more account of her than of the furniture. The creature never flinched, but stood at her post and ground her white teeth in silence, and burned, and pined, and raged, and froze, and was a model of propriety. On the day in question she was thinking of Griffith, as usual, and wondering whether he would always prefer yellow hair to black. This actually put her off her guard for once, and she gave the rival hair a little contemptuous tug: and the reader knows what followed. Staggered by her mistress's question, Caroline made no reply, but only panted a little, and proceeded more carefully. But O the struggle it cost her not to slap both Mrs. Gaunt's fair cheeks impartially with the backs of the brushes! And what with this struggle, and the reprimand, and the past agitations, by and by the comb ceased, and the silence was broken by faint sobs. Mrs. Gaunt turned calmly round and looked full at her hysterical handmaid. "What is to do?" said she. "Is it because I chid you, child? Nay, you need not take that to heart; it is just my way: I can bear anything but my hair pulled." With this she rose and poured some drops of sal-volatile into water, and put it to her secret rival's lips: it was kindly done, but with that sort of half contemptuous and thoroughly cold pity women are apt to show to women, and especially when one of them is Mistress and the other is Servant.