'Pray do not ask me. I wait for your answer.'
'I can only give in to you, and you're coward enough to take advantage of it.'
'You undertake to obey me?'
'I want to go to my room. Can I do so without asking?'
'You are mistress of my house, Paula, as long as you obey me in essential matters.'
Paula disappeared, and Mr. Dalmaine sat reflecting with much self-approbation on the firmness and suavity he had displayed.
CHAPTER XXXI
AN OLD MAN'S REST
It was not without much reluctance, much debate with conscience, that Bunce allowed his child to remain at Eastbourne. He could not, of course, have finally refused consent to a plan which might be the means of saving Bessie's life, and to be relieved of the cost of her support, receiving into the bargain a small monthly sum which Mrs. Ormonde represented as the value to her of Bessie's services at The Chestnuts, was a great consideration to a man in his perpetual state of struggle to make ends meet. But he had a suspicion that Mrs. Ormonde desired to get the girl away from him that Bessie might be, as he would have phrased it, perverted to the debasing superstition of Christianity.