"Will you let me speak to you upstairs in my own rooms?" she
asked.

Without waiting for a reply, she led the way to the stairs. Mr.
Rayburn and Lucy followed. They were just beginning the ascent to
the first floor, when the spiteful landlady left the lower room,
and called to her lodger over their heads: "Take care what you
say to this man, Mrs. Zant! He thinks you're mad."

Mrs. Zant turned round on the landing, and looked at him. Not a
word fell from her lips. She suffered, she feared, in silence.
Something in the sad submission of her face touched the springs
of innocent pity in Lucy's heart. The child burst out crying.

That artless expression of sympathy drew Mrs. Zant down the few
stairs which separated her from Lucy.

"May I kiss your dear little girl?" she said to Mr. Rayburn. The
landlady, standing on the mat below, expressed her opinion of the
value of caresses, as compared with a sounder method of treating
young persons in tears: "If that child was mine," she remarked,
"I would give her something to cry for."

In the meantime, Mrs. Zant led the way to her rooms.

The first words she spoke showed that the landlady had succeeded
but too well in prejudicing her against Mr. Rayburn.

"Will you let me ask your child," she said to him, "why you think
me mad?"