"Mrs. Chatterton. And she looked at me--oh! I can't tell you how she
looked; as if I were a bug, or a hateful worm beneath her," cried Polly,
quite as much aghast at herself. "It makes me feel horridly, Jasper--you
can't think." Oh! that old"--He stopped, pulling himself up with quite
an effort. "Has she come back--what brought her, pray tell, so soon?"

"I don't know, I am sure," said Polly, laughing at his face. "I was only
in the room a moment, I think, but it seemed an age with that eyeglass,
and that hateful little laugh."

"Oh! she always sticks up that thing in her eye," said Jasper coolly,
"and she's everlastingly ventilating that laugh on everybody. She thinks
it high-bred and elegant, but it makes people want to kill her for it."
He looked and spoke annoyed. "To think you fell into her clutches!" he
added.

"Well, who is she?" cried Polly, smoothing down her ruffled feathers,
when she saw the effect of her news on him. "I should dearly love to
know."

"Cousin Algernon's wife," said Jasper briefly.

"And who is he?" cried Polly, again experiencing a shock that this
dreadful person was a relative to whom due respect must be shown.

"Oh! a cousin of father's," said Jasper. "He was nice, but he's dead."

"Oh!" said Polly.