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 said she'd have it sent in at four,' Jill explained. 'She knows you like to give me tea.'

'She is thoughtful. She is considerate. She is my good angel,' said the old lady, still disarrayed, watching Joseph leave the room.

'She really is, you've hit the mark this time,' said Jill, laughing a little despite herself. 'You know it's very wrong of you to talk about being abandoned when you have her to care for you.'

'Do not lecture me! Do not preach to me! I cannot bear it! I can bear no more to-day!' cried the old lady. Her relief at having bridged the chasm that had threatened was so great that a shaft of archness shot into her glance, giving it the cajoling charm of a naughty, impenitent child's. 'Everything has gone against me to-day—to begin with your husband! He has a hard heart, that man! He is a bright, destructive Lucifer! Yes; I assert it! Even Marthe was unkind to me at lunch. She is not a saint, Marthe;—oh, no. You do not know how severely she can speak sometimes;—and with a gloomy brow. If you, too, go against me, take me au pied de la lettre, there will be nothing left for me to do but to cast myself down into the river from the precipice! And I warn you, you calm young Englishwoman, that I am sometimes near doing it! In old age the blood becomes cold and sluggish; the old cling torpidly to life. But I am not like the others. My blood can still rebel. You would not like to have the death of an old Frenchwoman—even of such a wicked, foolish old woman—on your conscience, would you?'