Lowther looked down, surprised, into Mavis's pleading, yet defiant
face.

"It was all my fault: you're hurting her and she's such a dear,"
continued Mavis,

"Better let her stay," said Devitt, while Mrs Devitt, seeing the
girl's flushed face, recalled the passage in Miss Mee's letter which
referred to Mavis's sudden anger.

Mrs Devitt hated a display of emotion; she put down Mavis's
interference with Lowther's design to bad form. She was surprised
that Lowther and her husband were so assiduous in their attentions
to Mavis; indeed, as Mrs Devitt afterwards remarked to Miss Spraggs:

"They hardly ever took their eyes oft" her face."

"Never trust a man further than you can see him," had remarked the
agreeable rattle, who had never had reason to complain of want of
respect on the part of any man with whom she may have been
temporarily isolated.

"And did you notice how her eyes flashed when she seized Jill from
Lowther? They're usually a sort of yellow. Then, as perhaps you saw,
they seemed to burst into a fierce glare."

"My dear Hilda, is there anything I don't notice?" Miss Spraggs had
replied, a remark which was untrue in its present application, as,
at the moment when Mavis had taken Jill's part, Eva Spraggs had been