"He said nothing to me about it," Viola responded, curtly, "and, besides, how can he expect me to be always at his command? He is not my jailer. I'm tired of his demands, they are so unreasonable."
Mrs. Lambert, as usual, entered to soothe and heal. "Viola's been very good about meeting Mr. Pratt's friends, Tony. We've hardly been out to dinner since we came here, and it really seems to me as if we had the right to go out to-night."
"We ought to have Thursdays, anyway," the girl scornfully added. "We have less liberty than our maids. The whole situation is becoming intolerable."
Clarke acknowledged that Pratt demanded a good deal, and was gracious enough to say: "It won't be necessary much longer. I'll go down and try to arrange the matter, and report what he says."
"I don't care what he says, I'm going," Viola repeated. "I'm going if he locks us out. I wish he would."
Pratt was resentful at once. "I don't want her to go to-night. I have some people coming in to see her. I don't want them disappointed; she must remain."
"She feels aggrieved because she has been kept so close here, and I must say—"
"I don't see why she feels that way, she has every luxury. She goes for a drive every afternoon, and there is hardly a night that I don't bring home somebody to dinner. It seems to me she's seeing all the people she ought to see. I don't believe in having her mix with those sceptics too freely."
He went up-stairs sulkily, quite in the mood to bully, but Mrs. Lambert turned away his wrath with a smile and several soft words, and Viola did not see him till she was on her way to the carriage. He was lurking in the hall below, waiting for her surly and sour and insulting.
Viola, perceiving his humor, said to herself: "I will not let you spoil my evening by making me angry. I will not listen to you," and she didn't, though she could not help hearing his warning growl.