Hide her shame! oh, how do I dare say it; how could I venture to say that she had disgraced herself, or even to think so? There she sat, clothed in a double respect, even by reason of all that made her so unlovely and distasteful to me, the real great lady of the house, served by everybody, imagining herself quite supreme; the head of the house, though she transferred all the trouble of it to other shoulders; Miss Mortimer, of the Park, a spotless maiden lady, who might have been, as the common story went, had she chosen to marry, almost of any rank she pleased. All that I knew; but as I gazed at her, the wild sudden fancy that had seized me before, grew stronger and stronger. A kind of loathing took possession of me. Shame may be dreadful, must be dreadful; but to deserve it, and yet to escape it--to know one’s self guilty, and fight all one’s life against the penalty--to shut one’s self up, heart and voice, like that in a corner, waiting for the discovery and exposure which has become inevitable--and resolute by every lie and expedient of falsehood to resist and baffle it--the sight was hideous to me. I turned away from her with a feeling of sickness--then in the impulse of the moment I spoke. “Should not you like to take this seat, Miss Mortimer, if you wish to see who comes in at the door?” “How do you know,” she cried, in her strangled voice, “that I wish to see who comes in at the door?” “I can see it in your eyes,” said I. I could not help a little shudder as I spoke. Her only answer was to draw a little further back into the twilight of her screen. I don’t think she looked at me again; but she did something else when Ellis came in the next time, which was quite as characteristic. She listened visibly, with an extraordinary intentness; her knitting stopped, though her eyes were bent on it. I could fancy she must have heard the very vibration of the man’s foot upon the floor, and satisfied herself by its sound what it was. “Miss Milly’s compliments, ma’am, and will you please step into the library a moment,” said Ellis to me. “Who’s in the library, eh?” interrupted Miss Mortimer, before I could speak. Ellis faced round upon her slowly, with evident surprise: “I don’t know as it’s nobody, ma’am,” said the man; “Miss Milly has something to show the young lady.” “Who’s in the house? why don’t you answer me? You are making up a story,” cried Miss Mortimer, almost with a shriek. “Nobody, as I know on, but the Captain, as is in the stables, ma’am, looking at the colt,” said Ellis, doggedly, “and Miss Milly, as is waiting in the library for the young lady, with some pictures to show to her, as it looked to me; nor likely to come neither on such a day.”