‘You will do nothing of the kind, my girl.’ He was in his usual place, already working at Marian’s task; he spoke in a low, thick voice. ‘Spend your evening as you choose, I have no need of you.’
‘I behaved very ill-temperedly. Forgive me, father.’
‘Have the goodness to go away. You hear me?’
His eyes were inflamed, and his discoloured teeth showed themselves savagely. Marian durst not, really durst not approach him. She hesitated, but once more a sense of hateful injustice moved within her, and she went away as quietly as she had entered.
She said to herself that now it was her perfect right to go whither she would. But the freedom was only in theory; her submissive and timid nature kept her at home—and upstairs in her own room; for, if she went to sit with her mother, of necessity she must talk about what had happened, and that she felt unable to do. Some friend to whom she could unbosom all her sufferings would now have been very precious to her, but Maud and Dora were her only intimates, and to them she might not make the full confession which gives solace.
Mrs Yule did not venture to intrude upon her daughter’s privacy. That Marian neither went out nor showed herself in the house proved her troubled state, but the mother had no confidence in her power to comfort. At the usual time she presented herself in the study with her husband’s coffee; the face which was for an instant turned to her did not invite conversation, but distress obliged her to speak.
‘Why are you cross with Marian, Alfred?’
‘You had better ask what she means by her extraordinary behaviour.’
A word of harsh rebuff was the most she had expected. Thus encouraged, she timidly put another question.
‘How has she behaved?’