ment.

So it was that she disliked Rose's wife with the hearty aversion of a
spiteful and jealous woman; and the fact that she herself came of the
people made her specially quick to suspect _bourgeois_ blood in others.

She took a delight, now, in snubbing Toni; and presently made a point of
asking after her cousin Miss Mibbs.

"She's very well, thank you," replied Toni, wondering a little at this
unusual condescension. "But her name isn't Mibbs, it's Gibbs."

"Really?" Lady Martin drawled the word out insolently, as though to
indicate that the name of the young woman in question did not interest
her. "She is not here to-day, I suppose?"

"No," said Toni, absent-mindedly, "she was not able to get off to-day."

"Get off?" Lady Martin pounced on the strange form of the admission.
"She is ... er ... full of social engagements?"

Afterwards Toni thought it was the scent of the flowers which had made
her feel hazy just then. Although she had an intuition that her
interlocutor meant to be inquisitive, she had not the sense to turn the
subject with a vague assent; and after a second's hesitation replied
rather foolishly that her cousin's engagements were not in society.

"Indeed? But it is holiday time--surely Miss Gibbs is not _teaching_
now?"

Mrs. Anstey, feeling to the full the insolence of this
cross-examination, attempted to come to the rescue; but Lady Martin
stood waiting so obviously for an answer that Toni felt constrained to
reply.

"No, Lady Martin. My cousin is not a governess."

"No?" Lady Martin, who had the lust for cruelty inherent in all mean
natures, pressed the point ruthlessly. "Then--I hardly see ... in the
summer one does not work unless one is a private secretary or something
of that sort; and I am sure your cousin"--with a pointed smile--"did not
look in the _very least_ like a private secretary!"

Suddenly Toni lost her head and her temper together.

"My cousin is no one's secretary, Lady Martin. She is in a shop--Brown
and Evans, drapers, of Brixton; and she is not here to-day because
Thursday is the early-closing day for the shops, and this is only
Tuesday!"

There was a short silence. Even Lady Martin felt uncomfortable, for
though she had literally goaded the girl into speech she did not enjoy
the spectacle of Toni's flashing eyes and scarlet cheeks, nor the
expression of mingled contempt and compassion on Mrs. Anstey's face--the
contempt, as she very well knew, being intended for