A day or two afterwards Mrs. Hardacre returned to the unedifying attack. Had Norma written to Morland to inform him of her arrival? Norma replied that she had no inordinate longing to see Morland. Mrs. Hardacre used language that only hardened and soured women of fashion who are beginning to feel the pinch of poverty dare use nowadays. It is far more virulent than a fishwife's, for every phrase touches a jangling nerve and every gibe tears a delicate fibre, whereas Billingsgate merely shocks and belabours. Norma bore it in silence for some time, and then went away quivering from head to foot. A new and what seemed a horrible gift had been bestowed upon her--the power to feel. Once a sarcastic smile, a scornful glance, a withering retort would have carried her in triumph from her mother's presence. Secure in her own callous serenity, she would have given scarcely a further thought to the quarrel. Now things had inexplicably changed. Her mother's stabs hurt. Some curious living growth within her was wrung with pain. She could only grope humbled and broken to her room and stare at nothing, wishing she could cry like other women. No wonder she looked old, when the spirit had left her and taken with it the cold, proud setting of the features that had given her beauty its peculiar stamp. Dimly she realised the disintegration. When a nature which has taken a colossal vanity for strength and has relied thereon unquestioningly for protection against a perilous world, once loses grip of that sublime mainstay, it is impossible for it to take firm hold again. It must content itself with lesser planks or flounder helplessly, fearful of imminent shipwreck. Norma, during those autumn months, had found her strength vanity. The fact in rude, symbolic form was brought home to her a short time after her return.