Aunt Sarah had never been so angry before in her life. She was an extraordinarily disagreeable old woman--disagreeable in a masterly, cold-blooded, incisive way, partly because disagreeable speech was a genuine expression of her nature, partly because she had discovered in the course of years that she gained more by being disagreeable, which came easy to her, than by being pleasant, which did not. One of the weapons of her armoury was the feigning of anger, and few could stand upright before her wrath. But for this very reason she had seldom been opposed in such a way as to make her really angry, and now that this had happened to her she was almost beside herself with rage. When she reached the cosy little sitting-room which had been devoted to her special use, having closed the door with a bang which re-echoed along the corridors, she found herself surrounded by just that atmosphere of personal comfort in which her sybaritic old soul delighted. A cheerful fire burned in the grate. Before it was drawn up the easiest of easy chairs. At the side of the chair stood a table upon which was a tray containing those refreshments, solid and liquid, with which Aunt Sarah loved best to fortify herself for the hours of darkness, a collection of papers and magazines, and half-a-dozen new books. The gay chintz curtains were close-drawn, and the electric lights behind their rosy shades threw just the right amount of light upon this pleasant interior. Aunt Sarah had often before left a company of people in displeasure and retired to her own apartment with a bang of the door behind her. But once shut in by herself the expression of her face had usually changed, and with a grim chuckle at her own astuteness, and the remembrance of her effective departure, she had settled herself down with a mind wiped clean of emotion to the enjoyment of her own society. But to-night Aunt Sarah took no delight in her own society, nor did her angry old face change as she closed the door on the cosy warmth of her room. It is true that she sat down in the easy chair in front of the fire. Women do not pace the room in their rage as is the custom with men. All the same, a consuming rage held her. It had in it a tinge of helplessness, and it shook her wiry old frame like an ague. Aunt Sarah was beaten, and she had the sense to recognise it. By-and-by she began to feel rather alarmed at her state of mind. Helpless anger is not a soothing emotion, and Aunt Sarah, in spite of her well-nourished vigour, was an old woman. It was very uncomfortable to be so angry, and it was still more uncomfortable to realize that her power of keeping her own personality in the ascendant had been wrested from her by "a chit of a low-born foreigner," as she expressed it to herself.