It was this speech which established Mrs. Stone’s position far more than her excellence in professional ways. A woman who dared to look a countess in the face, and make such a suggestion, was too wonderful a person to be contemplated save with respect and awe. Lady Langton herself withdrew, abashed and confounded, protesting that to take Maud a way was the last idea in her mind. And Mrs. Stone’s empire was thus established. The incident made a great impression on the county generally; and it nearly threw into a nervous fever the other mistress, conjointly with Mrs. Stone, of the White House, her sister Miss Southwood, called, as a matter of course, Southernwood by the girls, who stood by aghast, and heard her say, “I dispense with the three months’ notice:” and expected nothing less than that the sky should fall, and the walls crumble in round them. Miss Southwood liked to think afterward that it was her own deprecating glances, her look of horror and dismay, and, above all, the cup of exquisite tea which she offered Lady Langton as she waited for her carriage, which put everything straight; but all her civilities would never have established that moral ascendency which her sister’s uncompromising defiance secured.