"So you don't want to stay here?" she said sneeringly. "You want to go to your dearest papa? And you dare to write that! Who wrote it? Was it you, Lucy?" "I--I didn't write it, mamma dear," said Lucy. Suzette rose in distress. "Dear Lady Harriet----" she began. "Hold your tongue. So you wrote it, Sophy. Yes, I see now it's your writing. Oh, but you were all in it, I suppose. So you love your papa?" Garrett had stolen to within two or three yards of the door now, and it stood half open. She could hear all and see something of what happened. "So you love your papa?" Sophy had most courage. Desperate courage came to her now. "Yes, we do." "And you want to go to him?" "Yes, mamma." "And you don't love me? You don't want to stay with me?" Sophy glanced for a moment at her sisters. "Papa's so kind to us," she said. "And I'm not kind?" asked Harriet with a sneering laugh. "When you're older, my dears, thank me for having been kind--really kind. It's really kind to teach you not to play these tricks--these mean and disgraceful little tricks." All the children rose slowly and shrank back. They tried to get behind Suzette Bligh. Harriet laughed again when she saw the manœuvre. "You needn't stay, Suzette," she said. "I know how to manage my own children." Suzette was very white, and was trembling all over; it seemed as if her legs would hardly support her. "What are you going to do?" "It's no business of yours. They know very well. Leave me alone with them." It was a terrible moment for timid Suzette. But love of the children had laid hold of her heart, and gave her strength. "I can't go, Lady Harriet," she said in a low voice. "I can't leave you alone with them--not now." "Not now?" cried Harriet fiercely. "You're--you're not calm now. You're not fit----" "You'd stand between me and my own children?" "Dear Lady Harriet, I--I can't go away now." For she remembered so vividly all that the children's reminiscences, their nods and nudges, had hinted to her; she realised all the things which they had not told her; and she would not leave them now. Her resistance set the crown to Harriet Courtland's rage. After an instant's pause she gave a half-articulate cry of anger, and rushed forward. Suzette tried to gather the children behind her, and to thrust the angry woman away. But Harriet caught Sophy by the arm and lifted her midway in the air. Garrett came right up to the door and peeped through. "So you love papa and not me?" Sophy turned her pale, terrified little face up to her mother's. The worst had happened, and the truth came out. "No, we--we hate you. You're cruel to us; we hate you, and we love papa." Harriet's grip tightened on the child's arm. Sophy's very audacity kept her still for a moment. But at the next she lifted her higher in the air. Suzette sprang forward with a cry, and Garrett dashed into the room, shrieking, "Don't, don't, my lady!"