But Juliette did not heed her: she felt surging up in her young,
overburdened heart all the wrath and the contempt of the persecuted,
fugitive aristocrat against the triumphant usurper. She had suffered so
much from that particular class of the risen kitchen-wench of which the
woman before her was so typical and example: years of sorrow, of
poverty were behind her: loss of fortune, of kindred, of friends--she, even
now a pauper, living on the bounty of strangers.

And all this through no fault of her own: the fault of her class mayhap!
but not hers!

She had suffered much, and was still overwrought and nerve-strung: for
some reason she could not afterwards have explained, she felt spiteful
and uncontrolled, goaded into stupid fury by the look of insolence and of
triumph with which Candeille calmly regarded her.

Afterwards she would willingly have bitten out her tongue for her
vehemence, but for the moment she was absolutely incapable of checking
the torrent of her own emotions.

"Mademoiselle Candeille, indeed?" she said in wrathful scorn, "Desiree
Candeille, you mean, Lady Blakeney! my mother's kitchen-maid,
flaunting shamelessly my dear mother's jewels which she has stolen
mayhap ..."

The young girl was trembling from head to foot, tears of anger obscured
her eyes; her voice, which fortunately remained low --not much above a
whisper--was thick and husky.

"Juliette! Juliette! I entreat you," admonished Marguerite, "you must