When Betsy reached the sitting-room she found her mother crying helplessly and her father fuming up and down the room. "What do you mean by this, girl?" he asked, flourishing a folded paper in her face. "Did I not command you to have nothing more to do with that worthless fellow? And here you are actually writing to him, and bribing my servants to fetch his letters and to take him your answers! What do you mean?" "I mean, sir," Betsy answered, facing him bravely, "that I'll not submit to your tyrannical treatment any longer--keeping me a prisoner in these grounds, and forbidding me to hold any communication with the man I love and honor and mean to marry. I have been for weeks under restraint; not even allowed to walk about the yard without a spying black slave at my heels. More than this, two weeks ago you intercepted a letter addressed to me, and you now hold in your hand--without any right whatever--a note of mine to Mr. Logan. What if I did 'stoop to bribe a servant' to carry a message to my lover? That is little in comparison with your keeping me in durance, and intercepting my letters. And you talk to me of 'stooping' and of dishonor!" "Betsy! Betsy! my dear, my dear!" wailed her mother, "don't use such language. Oh, oh, you and your father are killing me!" "Mother, mother, have you no feeling for your daughter, that you have said no word to help her in all these months? Are you so under the thrall of that tyrant that you meekly submit without a protest to such treatment of me? Yes," she said, turning to her father, who stood motionless, his eyes blazing, his face white with passion, "you are a tyrant, but I defy you. You shall not break my spirit. I mean to marry Abner Logan as soon as he says the word." "Be silent, before I strike you!" cried her father, advancing toward her. "Go! Fling yourself into your lover's arms as soon as you please. I wash my hands of you, you willful, passionate hussy!" "Stop! stop! this instant, Hiram Gilcrest," shrieked his wife, rising from her chair and stamping her foot. Then she rushed to him, caught his arm and actually shook him, crying: "You shall not heap such abuse on my child! I have been silent long enough." If the portrait of old Silas Gilcrest, hanging above the mantel, had opened its mouth and spoken, father and daughter could not have been more astounded than at this outbreak. In the whole course of her married life this was the first time that Jane Gilcrest had ever asserted herself, or raised her voice against her lord and master. "Yes, you are a brute to use such language and to treat your daughter so! And now, I suppose you'll beat me, next; you look as though you'd like to fell us both to the earth with that whip--oh! oh! oh!" she shrieked, and fell back in a swoon.