“I shall stay here as long as I please, and I dare you to interfere with me!” Louise answered, insolently, but she had miscalculated the will and the strength of Molly’s defender, for the next instant she felt herself lifted off her feet and carried out of the room, along the hall and down the stairs like a whirlwind in the arms of angry Phebe, who never stopped until she opened the front door, pushed her victim out on the steps, and slammed and locked the door in her startled face. CHAPTER XXVI. Then Phebe turned to two astonished footmen who stood grinning and wondering in the hall. “If any of you men ever let that woman into this house again it will cost you both your situations!” she said, sharply, and flew upstairs again to her mistress. Meanwhile, Louise Barry, chagrined and foiled, and silently vowing revenge, went down the steps to her carriage, and to her dismay encountered Mrs. Laurens the elder, who had also alighted from her carriage, and just at the foot of the steps witnessed with dismay Louise’s summary ejectment from the house. “My dear Miss Barry, what does this mean?” she ejaculated, without waiting for the preliminaries of a formal greeting. Louise put on her most injured air. “You saw that woman put me out of the house by force?” she inquired. “Yes.” “That was some more of Molly Trueheart’s work,” Louise exclaimed, seeing here another opportunity to injure her victim. “Impossible! She could not be so mean!” “Ah, Mrs. Laurens, you can not gauge the depths of Molly Trueheart’s wickedness. I went to her on a mission of sisterly kindness and she repulsed me, insulted me, and with the help of that great amazon, her maid, forcibly ejected me from the house.” “After all I had heard I would not have believed she could be guilty of this!” Mrs. Laurens exclaimed in horror. “She is incorrigible,” Louise said, with a heavy sigh. “I went to her and offered to take her away and provide for her, knowing that your son’s house could no longer be a home for her, and pitying her in spite of the injury she had done me. But--well, you saw, Mrs. Laurens, what reception I met from that erring girl!” “Dreadful!” sighed Mrs. Laurens in profound distress. “Is it not?” exclaimed Louise, adding, eagerly, “Will you not aid and abet me, dear madame, in removing her, by force if necessary, from this house that is no longer a proper shelter for her head?” “Ah, that I only might. The task would be most grateful,” Mrs. Laurens answered. “But a far different purpose is mine now.” “Different?” “Yes, Miss Barry, different and most unwelcome. Instead of banishing that wretched girl from this roof forever, I am here to protect her from the consequences of her sin, to shield her by my presence from the faintest breath of scandal. In short, to keep the world from ever knowing the story of her folly and sin.” Louise paled and trembled. “Dear madame, what can you mean?” huskily.