"You need merely say that you are sorry," he urged, "and that you'll never stay out again without her approval. That will patch up everything."
"Father," she cried, exploding. "I can't say that. Because I simply don't mean it. From now on, I'm going to have my own way about some things, even if I have to leave the family. Mother may grind you to the very dust. Marriage seems to give her that right, and you seem to enjoy the process. But she shan't do so to me."
"Good Lord, what will happen next?" exclaimed the unhappy man, appalled at the collapse of his plan of conciliation. "The house has been like a funeral all day. Would to Heaven I were the corpse."
But his daughter did not hear this pathetic wish, for she was already on her way upstairs.
II
In Emily's bedroom above the parlor, Mrs. Barr was reclining in an invalid's chair. Illness had not softened the rigidity of that too, too solid flesh. She was pale, but her pallor merely accentuated the iron lines of her face.
Emily, more matronly than ever, hovered about her mother in unctuous solicitude, while Laura, the maid, busied herself setting chairs and knick-knacks wrong, in order to set them right again. Mrs. Barr disliked to have anyone about her unoccupied.
When Janet entered, her mother greeted her coldly, and then dismissed Laura with studied sweetness. She was actually much kinder to her domestics than to members of the family. Servants were hard to get and harder to keep.
"I'm sorry you have been ill," said the impenitent, politely.
"Sit down, my child. I'm getting better now, thanks in part to Doctor Hervey."