"Stay, Horace," she said; "you had better not send for her."
"May I be permitted to ask why, madam?" he inquired in a tone of mingled surprise and annoyance.
"Because she will not sing," answered the lady, coolly.
"Pardon me, madam, but I think she will, if I bid her to do it," he said with flashing eyes.
"No, she will not," persisted Mrs. Dinsmore, in the same cold, quiet tone; "she will tell you she is wiser than her father, and that it would be a sin to obey him in this. Believe me, she will most assuredly defy your authority; so you had better take my advice and let her alone—thus sparing yourself the mortification of exhibiting before your guests your inability to govern your child."
Mr. Dinsmore bit his lip with vexation.
"Thank you," he said, haughtily, "but I prefer convincing you that that inability lies wholly in your own imagination; and I am quite at a loss to understand upon what you found your opinion, as Elsie has never yet made the very slightest resistance to my authority."
He had given the bell-rope a vigorous pull while speaking, and a servant now appearing in answer to the summons, he sent him with a message to Elsie, requiring her presence in the drawing-room.
Then turning away from his step-mother, who looked after him with a gleam of triumph in her eye, he joined the group of gentlemen already gathered about the piano, where Adelaide had just taken her seat and begun a brilliant overture.
Yet, outwardly calm and self-satisfied as his demeanor may have been, Horace Dinsmore was even now regretting the step he had just taken; for remembering Elsie's conscientious scruples regarding the observance of the Sabbath—which he had for the moment forgotten—he foresaw that there would be a struggle, probably a severe one; and though, having always found her docile and yielding, he felt no doubt of the final result, he would willingly have avoided the contest, could he have done so without a sacrifice of pride; but, as he said to himself, with a slight sigh, he had now gone too far to retreat; and then he had all along felt that this struggle must come some time, and perhaps it was as well now as at any other.