The meal proceeded in embarrassing silence. Molly tried to eat, but it was a melancholy and mechanical proceeding. She burned her tongue with hot coffee, but she was afraid to cry out at the pain; she nearly choked herself trying to swallow things that she put into her mouth in the pretense of eating; and at last she gave it up and sat quiet, with her eyes on her plate, until the ordeal was over. How she groped her way to the morning-room she scarcely knew. Cecil had left the dining-room before her, and she followed slowly in his train. He was cutting the leaves of a book for his mother. At Molly’s entrance he rose and placed a chair for her with distant courtesy. She thanked him and sat down, and for some moments an embarrassing silence reigned. Cecil broke it with a curt sentence that made Molly start. “You are better?” he said. “Thank you, oh, yes, much better,” she faltered, grateful for even this notice. A glance at the pale, wan face did not assure him of the fact, but he went on, pitilessly: “You no longer need the care of a sick-nurse?” “Oh, no,” she faltered again, miserably, feeling as if he desired the negative; but she started when he exclaimed, with curt emphasis: “I am very glad to hear it.” “Why?” she faltered, looking up at him, but the handsome face was averted. But he had heard the timid question, for presently he answered, coldly: “I have been trying to be patient and wait until you were able to dispense with your maid. That impertinent woman has to go!” “My good Phebe to leave me? Oh, I can not let her go!” Molly cried, wildly; but Cecil answered, relentlessly: “I expected this. It does not matter to you that the woman has been grossly impertinent to my mother and to our friend, Miss Barry. Perhaps,” scornfully, “you tutored her to that end.” “I cannot let her go!” Molly cried, her head dropping forlornly on her breast. “She shall go! She has been rude to my mother, and my wife, as her guest, has no right to retain a servant distasteful to her hostess,” Cecil said, loftily. She hesitated a moment, then said, desperately: “Take me away, then, to a home of my own, where none can interfere with my choice of a servant.” He answered instantly, with offensive _hauteur_: “Under the present circumstances, such a course would not be agreeable!” He turned away and stood at the window, with his back to her, determined not to be moved by the sight of the little hands writhing in and out of each other in her lap, and the face with its expression of dumb, patient agony, while hot tears stole from under her lashes and dripped down her cheeks. The door opened, and his proud, stately mother entered with her graceful, gliding motion. She frowned when she saw poor Molly sitting there with the tears stealing down her cheeks. “If you are ill, Mrs. Laurens, perhaps I had better assist you to your room,” she said, with pointed courtesy. Molly shook her head without reply, and Cecil turned around.