“Amy,” she called over the banisters, “do you not hear your mistress’s bell?”

“I’m coming as quick as I can, m’m.”  The voice was still very glum.

Sophia murmured something inarticulate, staying till assured that Amy really was coming, and then she passed back into Cyril’s bedroom.  She waited there, hesitant, not exactly on the watch, not exactly unwilling to assist at an interview between Amy and Amy’s mistress; indeed, she could not have surely analyzed her motive for remaining in Cyril’s bedroom, with the door ajar between that room and Constance’s.

Amy reluctantly mounted the stairs and went into her mistress’s bedroom with her chin in the air.  She thought that Sophia had gone up to the second storey, where she ‘belonged.’  She stood in silence by the bed, showing no sympathy with Constance, no curiosity as to the indisposition.  She objected to Constance’s attack of sciatica, as being a too permanent reproof of her carelessness as to doors.

Constance also waited, for the fraction of a second, as if expectant.

“Well, Amy,” she said at length in her voice weakened by fatigue and pain.  “The letters?”

“There ain’t no letters,” said Amy, grimly.  “You might have known, if there’d been any, I should have brought ’em up.  Postman went past twenty minutes agone.  I’m always being interrupted, and it isn’t as if I hadn’t got enough to do—­now!”

She turned to leave, and was pulling the door open.

“Amy!” said a voice sharply.  It was Sophia’s.

The servant jumped, and in spite of herself obeyed the implicit, imperious command to stop.

“You will please not speak to your mistress in that tone, at any rate while I’m here,” said Sophia, icily.  “You know she is ill and weak.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“I never—–­” Amy began.

“I don’t want to argue,” Sophia said angrily.  “Please leave the room.”

Amy obeyed.  She was cowed, in addition to being staggered.

To the persons involved in it, this episode was intensely dramatic.  Sophia had surmised that Constance permitted liberties of speech to Amy; she had even guessed that Amy sometimes took licence to be rude.  But that the relations between them were such as to allow the bullying of Constance by an Amy downright insolent—­this had shocked and wounded Sophia, who suddenly had a vision of Constance as the victim of a reign of terror.  “If the creature will do this while I’m here,” said Sophia to herself, “what does she do when they are alone together in the house?”

“Well,” she exclaimed, “I never heard of such goings-on!  And you let her talk to you in that style!  My dear Constance!”

Constance was sitting up in bed, the small tea-tray on her knees.  Her eyes were moist.  The tears had filled them when she knew that there was no letter.  Ordinarily the failure of Cyril’s letter would not have made her cry, but weakness had impaired her self-control.  And the tears having once got into her eyes, she could not dismiss them.  There they were!