“I can’t do it,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, trying to make a stand. “It’s too utterly—extraordinary—”
“My dear, I’m the master in this house,” answered Alexander, coldly. “I wish it to be so. But if you’d rather not speak to her, I’ll go myself. She irritates me, but I’m glad to say she doesn’t intimidate me. As for such domestic difficulties as serving Katharine in her own room, they can be got over. Let your maid take the child her dinner.”
“Well—if you insist, I’ll go,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, weakly yielding. “I couldn’t let you go—you’d quarrel again.”
“I don’t insist upon your going, my dear—I have no right to. But I insist upon the thing being done.”
Mrs. Lauderdale went towards the door. She paused before she went out. “I think you’re going too far, Alexander,” she said. “I think you’re tyrannical.”
“I think not,” he answered, coolly. “I should refuse to sit down to table with a man who had used such language to me. I don’t see why I should submit to it from Katharine.”
“Well—”
Mrs. Lauderdale closed the door behind her, and slowly went upstairs, feeling as though she had been driven from the field after a crushing defeat. Yet she had made very little resistance. With her, the man’s cold, arrogant personality was dominant. She had always submitted to it because there seemed to be no other course. She was conscious of wishing that during the last five minutes she might have possessed her daughter’s character and fighting qualities, especially when her husband had quietly thrust all the blame about the treatment of Wingfield upon herself, without considering for a moment that his own words might have been misinterpreted.
She did not altogether sympathize with him against Katharine. For many years she had felt the galling of his miserable meanness, and had many times suspected that he was by no means as poor as he chose to declare himself to be.