passed firmly down the stairs and into the room, 'pale, but calm and
serene.' Oh! I was pale enough, I feel sure. But as to serene!--my
heart was flapping about just like a tin ventilator in a wind, and I
was jumpy all over. You see what a coward am I.

"Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her. Of that I am convinced.
She sat, enormous, thunder-browed, bolt upright in a straight chair. I
stood and quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books the
consciousness of virtue gives one complete self-possession in the face
of any accusation, however terrible. In books it is the accuser of the
innocent who is ill at ease. Oh, don't believe it! Mrs. Chater had the
self-possession, I had the jim-jams.

"'I have not seen you since last night,' she said.

"I gave a kind of terrified little squeak. I had no words.

"'Your version of what happened I do not wish to hear,' she went on.

"This relieved me, because for the life of me I could not have told
her had she wished to hear it. So I gave another little mouse-squeak.

"'My son has told me.' Her voice was like a deep bell. 'How you can
reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you have received at my
hands, here beneath my roof'--she was very dramatic at this point--'I
do not know.'

"Nor did I--but not in the way she meant. I was thinking how ignoble
was my meek attitude in light of what had happened. But you don't know
what it was like, facing that woman and dreading the worse fate of