I looked around, expecting to see the Major. I saw instead the Major’s future prima donna standing just inside the door, with her round eyes steadily fixed on me. “I can stand a good deal,” the girl began, coolly, “but I can’t stand _this_ any longer?” “What is it that you can’t stand any longer?” I asked. “If you have been here a minute, you have been here two good hours,” she went on. “All by yourself in the Major’s study. I am of a jealous disposition--I am. And I want to know what it means.” She advanced a few steps nearer to me, with a heightening color and a threatening look. “Is he going to bring _you_ out on the stage?” she asked, sharply. “Certainly not.” “He ain’t in love with you, is he?” Under other circumstances I might have told her to leave the room. In my position at that critical moment the mere presence of a human creature was a positive relief to me. Even this girl, with her coarse questions and her uncultivated manners, was a welcome intruder on my solitude: she offered me a refuge from myself. “Your question is not very civilly put,” I said. “However, I excuse you. You are probably not aware that I am a married woman.” “What has that got to do with it?” she retorted. “Married or single, it’s all one to the Major. That brazen-faced hussy who calls herself Lady Clarinda is married, and she sends him nosegays three times a week! Not that I care, mind you, about the old fool. But I’ve lost my situation at the railway, and I’ve got my own interests to look after, and I don’t know what may happen if I let other women come between him and me. That’s where the shoe pinches, don’t you see? I’m not easy in my mind when I see him leaving you mistress here to do just what you like. No offense! I speak out--I do. I want to know what you are about all by yourself in this room? How did you pick up with the Major? I never heard him speak of you before to-day.” Under all the surface selfishness and coarseness of this strange girl there was a certain frankness and freedom which pleaded in her favor--to my mind, at any rate. I answered frankly and freely on my side. “Major Fitz-David is an old friend of my husband’s,” I said, “and he is kind to me for my husband’s sake. He has given me permission to look in this room--” I stopped, at a loss how to describe my employment in terms which should tell her nothing, and which should at the same time successfully set her distrust of me at rest. “To look about in this room--for what?” she asked. Her eye fell on the library ladder, beside which I was still standing. “For a book?” she resumed. “Yes,” I said, taking the hint. “For a book.” “Haven’t you found it yet?” “No.” She looked hard at me, undisguisedly considering with herself whether I were or were not speaking the truth.