‘I don’t see any harm if Mr. Mumford had been here,’ replied the girl calmly.

‘I’m sure it’s most unwise of you to leave your bed,’ began Emmeline, with anxious thought for Louise’s health, due probably to her dread of having the girl in the house for an indefinite period.

’Oh, I’ve wrapped up.  I feel shaky, that’s all, and I shall have to sit down.’  She did so, on the nearest chair, with a little laugh at her strange feebleness.

’Now please don’t quarrel, you two.  Mrs. Mumford, don’t mind anything that mother says.’

Thereupon Louise’s mother burst into a vehement exposition of the reasons of discord, beginning with the calumnious stories she had heard at Mrs. Jolliffe’s, and ending with the outrageous arrogance of Mrs. Mumford’s latest remark.  Louise listened with a smile.

‘Now look here, mother,’ she said, when silence came for a moment, ’you can’t expect Mrs. Mumford to have a lot of strangers coming to the house just on my account.  She’s sick and tired of us all, and wants to see our backs as soon as ever she can.  I don’t say it to offend you, Mrs. Mumford, but you know it’s true.  And I tell you what it is:  To-morrow morning I’m going back home.  Yes, I am.  You can’t stay here, mother, after this, and I’m not going to have anyone new to wait on me.  I shall go home in a cab, straight from this house to the other, and I’m quite sure I shan’t take any harm.’

‘You won’t do it till the doctor’s given you leave,’ said Mrs. Higgins with concern.

’He’ll be here at ten in the morning, and I know he will give me leave.  So there’s an end of it.  And you can go to bed and sleep in peace, Mrs. Mumford.’

It was not at all unamiably said.  But for Mrs. Higgins’s presence, Emmeline would have responded with a certain kindness.  Still smarting under the stout lady’s accusations, which continued to sound in sniffs and snorts, she answered as austerely as possible.

’I must leave you to judge, Miss Derrick, how soon you feel able to go.  I don’t wish you to do anything imprudent.  But it will be much better if Mrs. Higgins regards me as a stranger during the rest of her stay here.  Any communication she wishes to make to me must be made through a servant.’

Having thus delivered herself; Emmeline quitted the room.  From the library, of which the door was left ajar, she heard Louise and her mother pass upstairs, both silent.  Mumford, too well aware that yet another disturbance had come upon his unhappy household, affected to read, and it was only when the door of Louise’s room had closed that Emmeline spoke to him.

‘Mrs. Higgins will breakfast by herself to-morrow,’ she said severely.  ’She may perhaps go before lunch; but in any case we shall not sit down at table with her again.’

‘All right,’ Mumford replied, studiously refraining from any hint of curiosity.