“Very well, Jane,” she said. “Under these circumstances, I need ask you no questions. This spares me a painful task. But as your senior, even but by a few years and a little experience, I trust that you will deeply consider your ways. You have not treated me well. That may not matter much now. But I fear that you are not acting in a way to secure your own womanly respectability and happiness. If you seek a reference from me, I shall have to tell any inquirer what has happened.” “Very well, m’m. Please, m’m, you’ll remember it was me that gave you notice.” “I shall remember,” said Lucy. Not another word was exchanged. The event gave Lucy a sleepless night, partly because it had excited her beyond her ebbing strength, and partly because she could not help forecasting ways and means with which to meet this fresh domestic difficulty. To live in the same house with somebody so flatly antagonistic as she felt Jane intended to be, was a hard trial for a lonely and over-strained woman. Lucy realised that Jane was capable of insolence—that her outburst had not been a mere fit of temper, but a revelation of the coarse, cruel nature seething beneath the dull exterior. It might not have been wise, but if Lucy had been a free woman, she would have paid Jane her wages and let her go at once, so as to clear the atmosphere. But Lucy was not a free woman; she had her engagements to fulfil, her work to do. She had hoped to take advantage of the fine weather to take Hugh a little out of town on Saturday afternoons, thus giving him fresh air and enjoyment, and also snatching an opportunity to make a study or a sketch. But now the four Saturday afternoons which would pass over before Jane’s departure were all the leisure in which to seek a new supply of domestic help. This “month” of Jane’s would bring Lucy to the edge of the summer holidays at the Institute. Had all gone on right with Jane, Lucy had meant to get her decent old charwoman to spend her nights in the house and give the girl company and security, while she and Hugh went down to Deal for two or three weeks. She had a secret consciousness that she was “running down” in a way which needed both the fresh sea breezes and the strong, calm presence of Jarvis May’s brave widow. She had hoped to persuade Miss Latimer to make one of the party. That lady herself would have respite from her one or two little engagements, and she had not had a seaside holiday for two or three years. Lucy meant to give the invitation as a favour to herself, since Miss Latimer’s presence would ensure her the more leisure and freedom for sketching. For in that seaside holiday she had hoped to lay in a store of sketches—as many as she could possibly work up before the darkening days of next winter would be brightened by Charlie’s return.