Mrs. Heth walked the floor, in the grip of those agonies which the defeat of her will brought her in poignant measure. It may be that her faith in her diplomatic plan had never been triumphantly strong. Now, certainly, her purposes were punitive only, and her flowing sentences well turned to her desire....
"You suppose your father's overjoyed to have his delightfully independent daughter thrown back on his hands--of course!" she was remarking. "True, you've heard him say a thousand times that he was going to sell his business as soon as you married and buy himself a place in the country and begin to have some pleasure of his own. But, of course, that was only his little joke! Yes, yes!" said mamma, brandishing her arms. "What he really wants is to go on slaving and toiling and worrying his heart out to keep you in pampered idleness and luxury, indulging your lightest whim without regard--"
"Mamma, mamma!--do, please!" the girl broke in. "If papa has been working so hard on my account--and I didn't know that--then I don't want him to do it any more. I wish he would sell--"
"Oh, I've no patience with your deathbed repentances! Don't you know your father's involved in serious worries at this moment, entirely on your account? Do you think a few dramatic speeches from you can undo--"
"Worries on my account? No, I didn't know of any.... What worries?"
Cally had stood listening with a kind of numbed listlessness, ready to go at the first opportunity, now that the real purpose of the interview was discharged. But suddenly she perceived a new pointedness in her mother's biting summaries; and she turned, with a slightly startled look in her eyes.
Her mother returned the gaze with savage sarcasm.
"Oh! You never heard of the Labor Commissioner and his hired character-assassin, I suppose! Never--"
"Yes, but I didn't know any of that was on my account."
"No, no, indeed! You thought it was just a little whim of your father's to keep his factory in a condition that's been a scandal in the community. Fighting off legislation--bribing inspectors--just his little bits of eccentric self-indulgence. You thought that ten thousand dollars I gave to the Settlement grew on a tree, I suppose. You--"