“Grace, I insist upon your silence! I will not discuss the matter with you.”
“If you insist upon silence, you must be obeyed, mother: but it is you who have raised the question between us. But when you attack me unjustly, I must defend myself.”
“You are forgetting yourself strangely. Your words are most disrespectful and unbecoming in a daughter. You tell me to my face that I am unjust—I, your mother—because I have been compelled to thwart your wishes.”
“No, no—not because of that!” returned Grace, in a voice of passionate pain; “why will you misunderstand me so?—but because you have no faith in me. You treat me like a child. You dispute my privilege to decide in a matter that concerns my own happiness. You bid me work for you, and you give me no wage—not a word of praise; and because I remonstrate for once in my life, you insist on my silence.”
“It seems that I am not to be obeyed.”
“Oh, yes; you will be obeyed, mother. After to-night I will not open my lips to offend you again. If I have said more than I ought to have said as a daughter, I will ask your pardon now; but I cannot take back one of my words. They are true,—true!”
“I must say your apology is tardy, Grace.”
“Nevertheless, it is an apology; for, though you have hurt me, I must not forget you are my mother. I know my life will be harder after this, because of what I have said; and yet I would not take back one of my words!”
“I am more displeased with you than I can say,” returned her mother, taking up her neglected work; and her mouth looked stern and hard.
Never had her aspect been so forbidding, and yet never had her daughter feared her less.