"Father," she cried, "I'll go with _you_! I couldn't live alone with Mother. If _you_ go, take me with you! Promise--please promise! Mother isn't good to me a bit. I couldn't live alone with her! She is cross nearly all the time, when you're not here, and she struck me yesterday, and she often does it, and I didn't ever tell you before, because I knew it would trouble you so to know!" These words were spoken in a high, pleading, plaintive voice. The child's sad little secret had been wrung from her by sheer terror of desertion. There was no accusative resentment in her tones; she might have gone on for a long time hiding the truth; it had leapt to her lips now only in the shape of an impetuous argument against the dreaded chance of being left behind, should her father's menace of departure become fact. Mrs. Twining moved from her own side of the table to where her husband and daughter stood. She looked persistently at Claire, during this action, and had soon drawn very close to her. "You sly young vixen!" she exclaimed. Her cry had a husky note, and she raised one hand. It was plain that she meant wicked work to Claire. Twining pushed Claire behind him, quick as thought, and seized his wife's hand while it fell. He had grown white to the lips. His clasp was not weak about the wrist which he still retained. He did not appear at all like a man in a passion, but rather like one filled with the resolve which gets new sinew from excitement. "You shall never strike that child again." Then he released his wife's wrist, and half turned, putting his arms round Claire, while she again nestled at his side. "I will do all I can for you," he went on, "but neither she nor I shall live with you after to-morrow. It was bad enough to have you make things hard for me, but you shan't spoil her with your own coarseness." The next moment he turned to Claire, wrapped her still more fervently in both arms, and kissed her twice or thrice on the uplifted forehead. Mrs. Twining stood quite still, for a short while. She was watching her husband intently. Something new in him had revealed itself to her; it blunted the edge of her anger; she was unprepared for it. Personal defiance in Twining might merely have quickened her own long-petted sense of grievance, which had grown morbidly dear, as we know. But a fresh experience fronted her; she found herself repelled, so to speak, by the revolt of an insulted fatherhood.