throat!"

"Your hair!" stammered Wimpole, losing all her small wit--"your beauteous
hair! A lock is gone, madam!"

Clorinda started to her feet, and flung the great black mass over her
white shoulder, that she might see it in the glass.

"Gone!" she cried. "Where? How? What mean you? Ah-h!"

Her voice rose to a sound that was well-nigh a scream. She saw the
rifled spot--a place where a great lock had been severed jaggedly--and it
must have been five feet long.

She turned and sprang upon her woman, her beautiful face distorted with
fury, and her eyes like flames of fire. She seized her by each shoulder
and boxed her ears until her head spun round and bells rang within it.

"'Twas you!" she shrieked. "'Twas you--she-devil-beast--slut that you
are! 'Twas when you used your scissors to the new head you made for me.
You set it on my hair that you might set a loop--and in your sluttish way
you snipped a lock by accident and hid it from me."

She beat her till her own black hair flew about her like the mane of a
fury; and having used her hands till they were tired, she took her brush
from the table and beat her with that till the room echoed with the blows
on the stout shoulders.

"Mistress, 'twas not so!" cried the poor thing, sobbing and struggling.
"'Twas not so, madam!"