uns, stopping between each one to stare at
her, out of his unpleasantly bright eyes. Suddenly, Miranda shut
her teeth, clenched her hands, and with a sort of fierce suppressed
ejaculation, lifted her shining foot and planted it full on the rat's
head. So sudden, so fierce, and so strong, was the stamp, that the
rat was crushed flat, and uttered a sharp and indignant squeal of
expostulation, while Sir Norman looked at her, thinking she had lost her
wits. Still she ground it down with a fiercer and stronger force every
second; and with her eyes still fixed upon it, and blazing with reddish
black flame, she said, in a sort of fiery hiss:

"Look at it! The ugly, loathsome thing! Did you ever see anything look
more like him?"

There must have been some mysterious rapport between them, for he
understood at once to whom the solitary personal pronoun referred.

"Certainly, in the general expression of countenance there is rather a
marked resemblance, especially in the region of the teeth and eyes."

"Except that the rat's eyes are a thousand times handsomer," she broke
in, with a derisive laugh.

"But as to shape," resumed Sir Norman, eyeing the excited and
astonished little animal, still shrilly squealing, with the glance of
a connoisseur, "I confess I do not see it! The rat is straight and
shapely--which his highness, with all reverence be it said--is not, but
rather the reverse, if you will not be offended at me for saying so."

She broke into a short laugh that had a hard, metallic ring, and then
her face darkened, blackened, and she ground the foot that crushed the
rat fiercer, and with a sort of passionate vindictiveness, as if she had
the head of the dwarf under her heel.

"I hate him! I hate him!" she said, through her clenched teeth and
though her tone was scarcely above a whisper, it was so terrible in its
fiery earnestness that Sir Norman thrilled with repulsion. "Yes, I hate
him with all my heart and soul, and I wish to heaven I had him here,
like this rat, to trample to death under my feet!"

Not knowing very well what reply to make to this strong and heartfelt
speech, which rather shocked his notions of female propriety, Sir Norman
stood silent, and looked reflectively after the rat, which, when she
permitted it at last to go free, limped away with an ineffably sneaking
and crest-fallen expression on his hitherto animated features. She
watched it, too, with a gloomy eye, and when it crawled into the
darkn