"I always make allowances, and you must learn to do so, Antoinette, for people who have never learned any manners."
Rotha was stung, but she confessed to herself that passion had made her overleap the bounds which she had purposed, and Mr. Digby had counselled, her behaviour should observe. So she was now silent.
"However," Mrs. Busby went on, "it is quite necessary that any one living in my family and sheltered by my roof, should pay me the respect which they owe to me."
"I will always pay all I owe," said Rotha deliberately, "so far as I have anything to pay it with."
"And in case the supply fails," said Mrs. Busby, her voice trembling a little, "don't you think you had better avoid going deeper into debt?"
"What do I owe you, aunt Serena?" asked the girl.
Mrs. Busby saw the gathering fire in the dark eyes, and did not desire to bring on another explosion. She assumed an impassive air, looked away from Rotha, rose and began to put her cups together on the tea-board, and rang for the tub of hot water.
"I leave that to your own sense to answer," she said. "But if you are to stay in my house, I beg you to understand, you must behave yourself to me with all proper civility and good manners. Else I will turn you into the street."
Rotha recognized the necessity for a certain decency of exterior form at least, if she and her aunt were to continue under one roof; and so, though her tongue was ready with an answer, she did not at once make it. She rose, and was about quitting the room, when the fire in her blazed up again.
"It is where mother would have been, if it had not been for other friends," she said.