"I am waiting," said Fortune. "There are more questions; but I want this one answered first."
"This is pure insolence!"
"Insolence of a kind, yes."
"And I refuse to answer. I have some authority still."
"Not so much, mother, as you had yesterday. You refuse to explain?"
"Absolutely!"
"Then I shall judge you without mercy." Fortune rose, her eyes blazing passionately. She caught her mother by the wrist, and she was the stronger of the two. "Can't you understand? I am no longer a child, I am a woman. I do not ask, I demand!" She drew the older woman toward her, eye to eye. "You palter, you always palter; palter and evade. You do not know what frankness and truth are. Is this continual evasion calculated to still my distrust? Yes, I distrust you, you, my mother. You have made the mistake of leaving me alone too much. I have always distrusted you, but I never knew why."
Mrs. Chedsoye tugged, but ineffectually. "Let go!"
"Not till I have done. Out of the patchwork, squares have been formed. What of the men who used to come to the villa and play cards with Uncle George, the men who went away and never came back? What of your long disappearances of which I knew nothing except that one day you vanished and upon another you came back? Did you think that I was a fool, that I had no time to wonder over these things? You have never tried to make a friend of me; you have always done your best to antagonize me. Did you hate my father so much that, when his death put him out of range, you had to concentrate it upon me? My father!" Fortune roughly flung aside the arm. "Who knows about him, who he was, what he was, what he looked like? As a child, I used to ask you, but never would you speak. All I know about him nurse told me. This much has always burned in my mind: you married him for wealth that he did not have. What do you mean by this simple young man across the corridor?"