‘Maybe you’d like a little tea, Miss?’ insinuated Mary Quince.

‘What impertinence!’ I exclaimed, with one of my angry stamps on the floor.  ‘Not you, dear old Quince,’ I added.  ‘No—­no tea just now.’

And I resumed my ruminations, which soon led me to this train of thought—­’Stupid and insulting as Dudley’s proposition was, it yet involved a great treason against my uncle.  Should I be weak enough to be silent, may he not, wishing to forestall me, misrepresent all that has passed, so as to throw the blame altogether upon me?’

This idea seized upon me with a force which I could not withstand; and on the impulse of the moment I obtained admission to my uncle, and related exactly what had passed.  When I had finished my narrative, which he listened to without once raising his eyes, my uncle cleared his throat once or twice, as if to speak.  He was smiling—­I thought with an effort, and with elevated brows.  When I concluded, he hummed one of those sliding notes, which a less refined man might have expressed by a whistle of surprise and contempt, and again he essayed to speak, but continued silent.  The fact is, he seemed to me very much disconcerted.  He rose from his seat, and shuffled about the room in his slippers, I believe affecting only to be in search of something, opening and shutting two or three drawers, and turning over some books and papers; and at length, taking up some loose sheets of manuscript, he appeared to have found what he was looking for, and began to read them carelessly, with his back towards me, and with another effort to clear his voice, he said at last—­

‘And pray, what could the fool mean by all that?’

‘I think he must have taken me for an idiot, sir,’ I answered.

’Not unlikely.  He has lived in a stable, among horses and ostlers; he has always seemed to me something like a centaur—­that is a centaur composed not of man and horse, but of an ape and an ass.’

And upon this jibe he laughed, not coldly and sarcastically, as was his wont, but, I thought, flurriedly.  And, continuing to look into his papers, he said, his back still toward me as he read—­

’And he did not favour you with an exposition of his meaning, which, except in so far as it estimated his deserts at the modest sum you have named, appears to me too oracular to be interpreted without a kindred inspiration?’

And again he laughed.  He was growing more like himself.

’As to your visiting your cousin, Lady Knollys, the stupid rogue had only five minutes before heard me express my wish that you should do so before leaving this.  I am quite resolved you shall—­that is, unless, dear Maud, you should yourself object; but, of course, we must wait for an invitation, which, I conjecture, will not be long in coming.  In fact, your letter will naturally bring it about, and, I trust, open the way to a permanent residence with her.  The more I think it over, the more am I convinced, dear niece, that as things are likely to turn out, my roof would be no desirable shelter for you; and that, under all circumstances, hers would.  Such were my motives, Maud, in opening, through your letter, a door of reconciliation between us.’