A princess, born the daughter of a princess, now she knew and looked it.
All thought of fear or deference was gone, she had nothing left but scorn for these two despicable creatures, the fat harpy and her crapulent consort who had battened so long upon her misery, who had held her in bondage to the most menial tasks of their wretched restaurant while they filched and hoarded the money paid them for giving her the care and the advantages that were her due.
And something of this new-found dignity, to which her title was so unquestionable, which set her upon a level from which she could not but look down on these two paltry frauds, so abashed the Frenchwoman that the phrases of invective and vilification which gushed instinctively from the foul springs of her temper stuck in her throat, she couldn’t utter them, and she well-nigh choked with impotent fury and fear as the girl spoke.
“You swindlers!” Sofia said, deliberately. “You poor cheats! To pocket a thousand pounds a year of my mother’s money—and make me slave for you in your wretched café! And for eighteen years! For eighteen years you have been robbing me of every right I had in the world, robbing me of everything I’ve needed and longed and prayed for, everything you were paid to give me—while I drudged for you and endured your ill-temper and your abuse and the contamination of association with you!... Give me that letter.”
She possessed herself of it unopposed. But now Mama Thérèse found her tongue.
“What—what do you mean?” she gasped, livid with fright. Was not a fortune slipping through her avaricious fingers? “What are you going to do?”
“Do?” Sofia cried. “I don’t know, more than this: I’m not going to stay another hour under this roof, I’m going to leave to-night—now— immediately! That’s what I’m going to do!”
“Where are you going?”
The question halted Sofia in the doorway.
“To find my father—wherever he is!”