“Was there more than that? May I sit down? I have had a long walk, and rather an exhaustive interview--and I did not expect to be put on my trial. But it is always best to know what one is accused of. I think it quite natural--quite natural that you should not like me, Mrs. Leigh. I was Amy’s friend and she was trying to you. She put me in a very false position which I ought never to have accepted. But yet--I understand your attitude, and I submit to it with respect--but, pardon me--sincerely, I don’t know what there was more.” Miss Lance had taken a chair, a perfectly upright one, on which few people could have sat gracefully. She made it evident that it was mere fatigue which made her subside upon it momentarily, and lifted her fine head and limpid eyes with so candid and respectful an air towards Mrs. Leigh’s comfortable, unheroic face, that no contrast of the oppressed and oppressor could have been more marked. If anyone had suffered in the matter between these two ladies, it certainly was not the one with the rosy countenance and round, well-filled-out figure; or so, at least, any impartial observer certainly would have felt. Mrs. Leigh, for her part, was almost speechless with excitement and anger. She had intended to keep perfectly calm, but the look, the tone, the appearance of this personage altogether, brought before her overpoweringly many past scenes--scenes in which, to tell the truth, Miss Lance had not been always in the wrong, in which the other figure, now altogether disappeared, of Aubrey’s wife was the foremost, an immovable gentle-mannered fool, with whom all reason and argument were unavailing, whom everybody had believed to be inspired by the companion to whom she clung. All Amy’s faults had been bound upon Laura’s shoulders, but this was not altogether deserved, and Miss Lance did not shrink from anything that could be said on that subject. It required more courage to say, “Was there anything more?” “More!” cried Mrs. Leigh, choking with the remembrance. “More! My boy’s house was made unsafe for him, it was made miserable to him, he was involved in every kind of danger and scandal, and she asks me if there was more?”