desperately, was one to make a dent in her
appalling ignorance? She irritated him. And as is usual with people
who do not understand, he took exactly the wrong course with her.

"I want you at least to try to live up to your position," he said
with cold directness, beetling his brows at her. "I want you to do
what you're told--and to keep on doing it! Do you understand that?"
He felt that he was allowing himself to be more wrought up than was
good for him, and this added to his annoyance.

She considered this, sullenly. "I'm not exackly straight in my mind
what I understand and what I don't understand, yet," she replied.
"But I got this much straight: If I done what I done to please you,
I done it to please me, too!"

This was logical enough; it had even a note of common sense and
justice. But her crude method of expressing it filled him with cold
fury. The Champneys temper strained at the leash.

"Ah!" said he, a dark flush staining his face, "ah! Then get this
straight, too: you'll please me only _if_ you carry out your part of
our contract. What! do you dream I would ruin my nephew's life for a
self-willed, undisciplined minx? Nothing could be farther from my
thoughts! Nancy, _I_ made you Mrs. Peter Champneys: you will qualify
for the position--or lose it!" He tapped his foot on the floor, and
glared at her.

Nancy gave him glare for glare. "Yeah, you said it! You made me Mrs.
Peter Champneys, and all I got to do is to do what I don't want to
do, to hold down the job! What you askin' _him_ to do to please
_me_? How's _he_ qualifyin'? Is he so much I'm nothin'? Because
that's what he thinks! Oh, you needn't talk! I guess I got eyes, at
least!"

"I suggest that you use them to your own advantage, then," said he,
disgustedly. "Let us have done with such squabbling! You agreed to
obey. Very well, then, you will do so, or I shall take steps to put
you outside of my calculations. In other words, I will wash my hands
of you. Is that perfectly clear to you?" How else, he asked himself,
was he to make her understand?

She saw that he was in a towering rage, and she reflected that if
she had made Baxter that mad he'd have banged her with his fists.
For a long minute the two stared at each other. She was about to
make a defiant reply and let come what might, when a sort of spasm
distorted his face. His mouth opened gaspingly, his eyes rolled back
in his head like a dying man's. He seemed to crumple up, and she
caught