“Katharine!” exclaimed Alexander Junior, sternly, “you are very impertinent.”
“Because I tell you what I think my duty is? I’m sorry you should think so. And besides, since you seem so very anxious that I should betray a secret, I’m afraid that it wouldn’t be very safe with you.”
Alexander Junior did not wince under the cut. He was firmly persuaded that he was in the right.
“If you were not a grown-up woman, I should send you to your room,” he said, coldly.
“Yes, I realize the advantage of being grown up,” answered Katharine, with contempt.
“But I shall not tolerate this conduct any longer,” continued Alexander Junior. “I will not be defied by my own daughter.”
“Charlotte defied you for twenty years,” replied Katharine, “and she’s not half as strong as I am. And I never defied you, and I don’t now. That’s not the way I should put it. I’m not so dramatic, and as long as I won’t,—why, I won’t, that’s all,—and there’s no need of calling it defiance, nor by any other big name.”
Alexander was a cold man, and it was not likely that he should lose his temper again as he had when he had walked home with her from Robert Lauderdale’s. He began to recognize that in the matter of imposing his will forcibly, he had met his match. He had generally succeeded in dominating those with whom he came into close relations in life, but his hard and freezing exterior had contributed more to the effect than his intellectual gifts. Finding that his personality failed to produce the usual result, he temporized, for he was not good at sharp answers.
“There’s no denying the fact,” he said, “that uncle Robert has told you about his will. Can you deny that?”
The latter question is a terrible weapon, and is the favourite one of dull persons when dealing with truthful ones, because it is so easily used and so effective. Katharine was familiar with it, and knew that her father had few others, and none so strong. She met it in the approved fashion, which is as good as any, though none are satisfactory.