"Silence!" she cried, shaking. "I was a fool ever to have had you here! You make discipline impossible. You corrupt your fellow-students--you make a boast of your unfortunate parentage--you show no respect for the Rules--you think yourself at liberty to come and go as you please--you carry on a vulgar intrigue----" "--not with a gardener----" ("Oh, I _really_ must go my rounds!" murmured Miss Harriet; but she lingered; the spectacle of Olympians forgetting themselves does not occur every day.) "--disgracing yourself among younger and more innocent girls----" "--with a Lovenant-Smith, anyway----" Again the stamp. "I forbid you to mention his name!" "Roy----" "Leave the room!" ("Please, please!" besought Miss Harriet.) "You will pack your boxes at once!" "I shall consult Lord Moone's lawyer first. You accepted my fees--your college is an imposition from beginning to end, and I'll see that's known. That will be another scandal----" "Ah!" choked Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, perhaps with some hazy recollection of the law of slander in her head. "You hear that, Miss Chesson? You hear that? You heard those words?" "No, I didn't quite catch--ladies--please!" "If you didn't catch it, I said the whole place was a shameless fraud," said Louie calmly. "Very good. Ring the bell, Miss Chesson!" But the servant appeared only in time to see Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's complete collapse. She sank, shaking, into a chair, and gazed unseeingly into a pigeon-hole of her desk, as if she might find some help against this devilish girl there. As she clung (as it were) to the ropes, Louie let her have it (so to speak) on the beezer. "You oughtn't to be here at all, really, you know," she said. "You ought to be in one of those places--you know--in the Queen's gift, at Kensington or Hampton Court, with the dowagers and maids-of-honour. If you like I'll ask my uncle whether he can't do anything." And without waiting for an answer she swept out, not by the door, but by the French window. The reflection of the yellow-shaded standard-lamp swung again as she did so. She entered the courtyard by the side door, passed under the dark yew and the arch beneath the box-room, and made her way through the orchard. She had reached her pitch at the foot of the hill before she remembered that she had forgotten her mattress and blankets. She returned in search of them. Twenty minutes later she was in bed, her knees up, her hands clasped behind her head. She was white with triumph. That woman! Well, Louie thought she had held her own. She had had the last word, at all events, and an optic-bunging one too. Now should she leave, or stay? It was entirely a question of balance between her desire to see the last of the place and her resolve to go at nobody's pleasure but her own. It might be that she would have to stay another week in order to avoid the suspicion that she was turning tail. The fraud of a place! She lay, pale and victorious, thinking the matter over.