Lady Janet At Bay

The silence in the bedroom was broken by a murmuring of women's voices
outside the door.

Lady Janet instantly raised herself in the chair and snatched the
photograph off the easel. She laid the portrait face downward, among
some papers on the table, then abruptly changed her mind, and hid it
among the thick folds of lace which clothed her neck and bosom. There
was a world of love in the action itself, and in the sudden softening of
the eyes which accompanied it. The next moment Lady Janet's mask was on.
Any superficial observer who had seen her now would have said, "This is
a hard woman!"

The door was opened by the maid. Grace Roseberry entered the room.

She advanced rapidly, with a defiant assurance in her manner, and a
lofty carriage of her head. She sat down in the chair, to which Lady
Janet silently pointed, with a thump; she returned Lady Janet's grave
bow with a nod and a smile. Every movement and every look of the little,
worn, white-faced, shabbily dressed woman expressed insolent triumph,
and said, as if in words, "My turn has come!"

"I am glad to wait on your ladyship," she began, without giving Lady
Janet an opportunity of speaking first. "Indeed, I should have felt it
my duty to request an interview, if you had not sent your maid to invite
me up here."

"You would have felt it your duty to request an interview?" Lady Janet
repeated, very quietly. "Why?"

The tone in which that one last word was spoken embarrassed Grace at
the outset. It established as great a distance between Lady Janet and
herself as if she had been lifted in her chair and conveyed bodily to
the other end of the room.