Alice broke in: "Oh, fathers—they're different! My poor Daddelums was the sweetest thing on earth. I wrapped him round my little finger. But mother—umm, she gets her own way, I can tell you—at least she thinks she does. I wouldn't let any earthly power tear me away from my darling Stowe, but I don't dare face her down."
"I thought she always liked Mr. Webb?" Persis said.
"Oh, she did till his father's will was probated. His insurance was immense, but his debts were immenser. So poor Stowe is dumped upon the world with hardly a cent. Of course, I love him all the more; but mother has turned against him. I wouldn't mind starving with Stowe, but mother is so materialistic! She wants to marry me off to that dreadful old Senator Tait."
"Dreadful?" snorted Winifred, who had listened in silence. "Old? Senator Tait is neither dreadful nor old. He is a cavalier, and in the prime of his powers."
"You can have him!" snapped Alice, with a flare of temper that she regretted instantly, and the more sincerely since she knew that Winifred had long been angling vainly and desperately for the Senator. There was a bitterer sarcasm in her retort than she meant, but Winifred knew what Alice was thinking, and canceled it by meeting it frankly:
"I wish I could have him. God knows I'd prefer him to any of these half-baked whippersnappers that—"
"Winifred!" Persis murmured, subduingly; and Miss Mather subsided like a retreating thunder-storm. "The Senator is one of the—"
"I know he is, my dear," Alice broke in, in her most soothing tone. "He's far, far too splendid a man for a fool like me. But can't I admit how splendid he would be in the Senate Chamber without wanting him in my boudoir?"
"Alice!" gasped Persis. "Remember that there are young men present."
Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but do you really mean that Senator Tait is—is proposing for your hand?"