The young girl had been both sorry and ashamed at her own loss of temper. Not that an outburst such as that she had indulged in was any unusual thing. Like many young girls of spirit under injudicious rule, Mabin was in a state of perpetual friction with those around her. Her step-mother was not intentionally unkind; but poor Mabin had to suffer from the constant comparison of her unruly and independent self with her quiet and insipid half-sisters. And the worst of it was that her father was even less indulgent than his wife to her waywardness. A stiff, straight-laced, narrow-minded man, accustomed to be looked up to and deferred to by the female members of his household, he disapproved in the strongest manner both of the erratic moods of his eldest daughter, and of her longing for independence. It was from him, indeed, that Mabin chiefly suffered. She looked upon the cold, handsome, aquiline face of her father with something very much like horror, and the mere fact that he approved only of submissive “womanly” women seemed to goad her into the very rebelliousness and independence which shocked him so deeply. At the same time that he disapproved of her, however, Mr. Rose did not hesitate to avail himself of his daughter’s bright wits; and if any task requiring a little thought or a little judgment presented itself, it was always upon Mabin’s shoulders that he put the burden. He had even gone so far, protesting loudly the while against the “unfeminine” practice, as to allow Mabin to ride a bicycle; and it was on this machine that the girl was expected to go into Seagate two or three times a week, to fetch him his books and magazines from the local library. As Mrs. Bonnington descended the steps of the big stone house, and, emerging from the portico, made her way down the broad gravel path to the gate, she met Mabin coming out by the side gate among the evergreens with her bicycle by her side. Now if there was one thing more detestable in the eyes of the Vicar’s wife than another, it was a bicycle. But this detestation increased tenfold when the rider of the obnoxious machine was a woman. It was her one grievance against upright Mr. Rose that he allowed his nineteen-year-old daughter to “career about the country” on the abominable thing. She uttered an involuntary “Ugh!” of disgust as the thing almost touched her uplifted skirts. “I beg your pardon. I hope I didn’t run against you. I am so clumsy,” said Mabin with studied politeness. “You can’t expect to be anything but clumsy while you use such a thing as that!” said Mrs. Bonnington severely. “I wish for your own sake it would get broken, that you might never be seen in an attitude so unbecoming to a gentlewoman again.”