"What the hell are you, then?" he snarled furiously. "I'm--I'm--a--" The old nurse, scared by the voice raised beyond discretion, had dragged herself to the door of division between her room and the parlour, and now stood clinging to the door handle. "She's a lady, young man," said the nurse severely; "and her aunt's a lady of title, and don't you forget it!" "Forget it," he cried, with a laugh that Jack's wife remembers still; "she's a lady, and she's fooled me this way? I won't forget it, nor she shan't neither! By God, I'll give her something to forget!" With that he caught the silken tea-gown and Jack's trembling wife in his arms and kissed her more than once. They were horrible kisses, and the man smelt of onions and hair-oil. "And I loved her--curse her!" he cried, flinging her away, so that she fell against the arm of the chair by the fire. He went out, slamming both doors. She had softened and bewitched him to the forgiving of the outrage that her indifference was to his love. The outrage of her station's condescension to his was unforgivable. * * * * * She went back to her Jack next day. She was passionately glad to see him. "Oh, Jack," she said, "I'll never, never go away from you again!" * * * * * But the greengrocer from Kent reeled down the street to the nearest public-house. At closing time he was telling, in muffled, muddled speech, the wondrous tale, how his girl was a real lady, awfully gone on him, pretty as paint, and wore silk dresses every day. "She's a real lady--she is," he said. "Ay!" said the chucker out, "we know all about them sort o' ladies. Time, please!" "I tell you she is--her aunt's a lady of title, and the gal's that gone on me I expect I'll have to marry her to keep her quiet." "I'll have to chuck you out to keep _you_ quiet," returned the other. "Come on--outside!" THE BRUTE THE pearl of the dawn was not yet dissolved in the gold cup of the sunshine, but in the northwest the dripping opal waves were ebbing fast to the horizon, and the sun was already half risen from his couch of dull crimson. She leaned out of her window. By fortunate chance it was a jasmine-muffled lattice, as a girl's window should be, and looked down on the dewy stillness of the garden. The cloudy shadows that had clung in the earliest dawn about the lilac bushes and rhododendrons had faded like grey ghosts, and slowly on lawn and bed and path new black shadows were deepening and intensifying.