"How should I know, mamma?" asked the girl, evasively, and turning her crimson face away from her mother's keen scrutiny. "You see he writes himself unknown."
"Well, known or unknown, here is an end to that foolishness," said Mrs. Lyle, crossing the room and tossing the luckless flowers out of the window. "I did not know you were so silly and romantic, Queenie, as to carry a bunch of dead flowers to Europe."
Queenie stamped her little foot on the floor, and her eyes flashed fire.
"Mamma, you had no right to throw my flowers away!" she passionately exclaimed. "Papa would never have intermeddled with my affairs like that!"
Mrs. Lyle dropped into a chair and buried her face in her hands.
"To think that I should have a child that would treat me so disrespectfully," she sighed.
"What has mamma been doing to my little pet?" asked Mr. Lyle, entering quietly and unexpectedly, as he always did.
There was an awkward silence for a moment; then Queenie said, with her sweet face turned away:
"Mamma has been scolding me because I would not marry Captain Ernscliffe."