“Oh, miss,” said Jane, “they say you’ll never tell her. Mr. Saunders says as you’ll never throw us all out of our places, and put the family to such inconvenience. It would be dreadful troublesome to get new servants just in the middle of winter. If we all got our month’s warning it would throw it just before Christmas as we left. Mr. Saunders says if you did do it, Mrs. Parke would just pay no attention. It would be inconvenient. And he says he’s sure you’d have more consideration than to make us all lose our places. And Mrs. Cook she says----” “I don’t want to hear what they say. I think they have neither hearts nor consciences,” said Mary indignantly. “Oh, as for that, miss,” said Jane, “we’re just the same as other folks, I suppose. We think what’s pleasing to ourselves first.” And Mary had to admit that if they had neither hearts nor consciences they had heads, and judged the position fairly enough. For though she was very indignant and might have denounced the conspirators on the spur of the moment had she had the opportunity, she knew that her courage would have failed her when it came to the point, and that to deprive the servants of their living was what she never could have done. Saunders had a wife and family. John had a mother whom he was supposed to help. The saucy housemaid was a widow with a child. And it was also true that Letitia would think twice before she dismissed all her servants so near Christmas. The calculation was very close all round. And then the nurse, whose verbal impertinence vexed Mary most, was all the time exceedingly careful of the children. There was nothing to find fault with in that respect. Mary thus felt herself caught in the meshes of the conspiracy, and did not know what to do. And all the time Lord Frogmore’s letter was locked up in her desk; and she had as yet made no reply to it. It was the thing, perhaps, on the whole which made the persecution in the house less important to her. What did it matter what Saunders and his kind might do? The humiliation which they inflicted made her smart for the moment, but it was not so bad even now as the careless civility which she had borne from their masters, or the no-account which was generally made of such a person as herself in the world. She was well used to all that. And to think that by a word at any moment she would put a stop to it all and change everything! She did not answer the letter she could scarcely tell why. Not that it did not occupy her day and night. She thought of it in all ways, turning it over and over. It was a sort of occupation to her which obliterated everything else to think what she should say. What should she say? And then the long round of questioning, of balancing one side against the other would begin.