"I refused him!"
"For God's sake, Phyllis! Do you think you can afford to play with a man like that? He won't stand for it."
"Let him sit for it then and, mother, you might as well know, first as last, that I am not playing with him."
There was a calm note of firmness in the voice of the girl. She was prepared for this scene. She had known it was coming. Her mother was hot with irritating astonishment. The calmness of the girl in suddenly beginning to dig a grave for this dear ambition—rich with promise—in the very day when it had come submissively to their feet, stung like the tooth of a serpent. She stood very erect and said with an icy look in her face:
"You young upstart! What do you mean?"
There was a moment of frigid silence in which both of the women began to turn cold. Then Phyllis answered very calmly as she sat looking down at the bunch of violets in her hand:
"It means that I am married, mother."
Mrs. Bing's face turned red. There was a little convulsive movement of the muscles around her mouth. She folded her arms on her breast, lifted her chin a bit higher and asked in a polite tone, although her words fell like fragments of cracked ice:
"Married! To whom are you married?"
"To Gordon King."