Certainly, what with one thing and what with another, Mrs. Belassis had ample food for meditation; but she had stayed so long that she feared to linger. She locked up the drawer, and was preparing to leave, when Maud came suddenly in, in her riding-habit. ‘Aunt Celia, you here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have you been here all this while? Aunt Olive says she has never even seen you. What can you have been doing all this time? Two whole hours!’ Maud looked both excited and suspicious. This was her house, and she was mistress; and she considered that her Aunt Celia had taken a great liberty in making her way in unobserved, and shutting herself up in Phil’s den. Her face showed as much very plainly. Mrs. Belassis looked at her with her cold smile. ‘Do not act and speak like a spoilt child, my dear. It is not becoming to a young mistress. I fear you are forgetting the lessons I instilled into your mind at Thornton House.’ ‘Oh, there is no fear of my forgetting your lessons or Thornton House either,’ cried Maud, with what sounded very like defiance in her tone. ‘But I hope I have shaken off the effects of that yoke. What I want to know is, why you have been shut up in Phil’s room for two hours—in his _private_ room.’ Mrs. Belassis looked at the indignant Maud with a smile of cool disdain. ‘As this is your brother’s house, over which you preside, I will condescend to reply, otherwise I should decline to answer such an insolent interrogation. After I left you I made a tour of the gardens and hot-houses, which I am never invited to inspect, of course, owing to the kind politeness of the mistress of Ladywell. After I had enjoyed the sweetness of the flowers and trees for above an hour, I came here to write a note to Philip; but what I wrote did not satisfy me, and I tore up the letter and determined to wait till I could see him personally. Just as I was about to leave the room my niece entered, and here we are now, face to face. Are you satisfied?’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered Maud; ‘but I hear what you say. Are you going? Good-bye. If you care to see Aunt Olive she is in the drawing-room. We shall have lunch in an hour.’ ‘I will go home, thank you,’ said Mrs. Belassis coldly. ‘Good-bye, my dear.’ Maud watched her cross the hall, a distrustful and angry light in her eyes. ‘She always gets the best of it with me. I can never be politely cutting to Aunt Celia, as Phil is. I am always rude, and she makes me feel like a schoolgirl. How I detest her! I wonder why she came. I know what she said was all lies. What can she have been up to? I wonder what that letter to Phil was that she wrote and destroyed. Did she write a letter at all?’ Maud went forward and carefully looked about for torn fragments of paper, but could find none.