"Are you mad?" I asked.

The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a
person who had deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it
cheerfully.

"Yes," she said. "I begin to think I _am_ mad--mad to have
devoted myself to an ungrateful woman, to a person who doesn't
appreciate a sisterly and Christian sacrifice of self. Well, I
won't do it again. Heaven forgive me--I won't do it again!"

"Do what again?" I asked.

"Follow your mother-in-law," cried the landlady, suddenly
dropping the character of a martyr, and assuming the character of
a vixen in its place. "I blush when I think of it. I followed
that most respectable person every step of the way to her own
door."

Thus far my pride had held me up. It sustained me no longer. I
dropped back again into my chair, in undisguised dread of what
was coming next.

"I gave you a look when I left you on the beach," pursued the
landlady, growing louder and louder and redder and redder as she
went on. "A grateful woman would have understood that look. Never
mind! I won't do it again I overtook your mother-in-law at the
gap in the cliff. I followed her--oh, how I feel the disgrace of
it _now!_--I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went