Now that she had become more accustomed to Lady Pollexfen and her peculiar ways, the duties of her position ceased to press so heavily upon Janet. She found, to her surprise, that Lady Pollexfen's often positively cruel speeches no longer wounded her feelings so deeply as they did at first. The dislike and fear with which she had formerly regarded the strange old woman began to give place to a gentler feeling--to one of profound pity, and in this very pity she found an armour of proof against all the slights and contumely with which she was treated. One thing must be said in favour of Lady Pollexfen. However capricious she might be in her own treatment of Janet, the servants were given to understand that in all things Miss Holme was to be regarded as a young gentlewoman, and not as one of themselves. Sometimes her ladyship would be overcome by a fit of graciousness, which, however, never lasted more than a day or two at a time; but while it did last Janet felt that her life was a very pleasant one. Such occasions were exceptional. Lady Pollexfen's normal mood was one of mingled harshness and suspicion, just rubbed over with a sort of cynical _laissez faire_-ism that to a girl of Janet's disposition was peculiarly distasteful. Janet never answered her taunts and bitter speeches, but now and then a flash of scorn from her beautiful eyes, or a sudden rush of colour to her cheek, showed that the barbed words had struck home. Janet's icy meekness had often the effect of irritating her ladyship far more than any angry retort would have done. At the latter she would merely have laughed, but Janet's demeanour seemed suggestive of a fine though hidden contempt, and betrayed an indifference to her taunts that robbed her of half her pleasure in the utterance of them. As a consequence, there being no real faults to lay hold of, she sometimes accused Janet of those faults from which she was most free. "Who and what are you, Miss Holme," she one day asked, in her scornful way, "that you should give yourself the airs of a _grande dame_ when in my presence? Judging from your demeanour, you and not I might be the mistress of Dupley Walls. Pride ill becomes a dependent like you--a mere nobody--a person who has eaten the bread of charity from the day of her birth. If you had even the excuse of good looks! But that is quite out of the question. If you are in any way remarkable, it is for an incurable _gaucherie_, and for a stolidity of intellect that would not discredit a ploughboy." It was only the teaching and example of Sister Agnes that kept Janet on such occasions from breaking into open rebellion, and bidding farewell for ever to Dupley Walls. But the gentle counsels of the sick woman prevailed, and by degrees these bitter speeches lost much of their sting.