Dinah recoiled before the unshackled fury that suddenly blazed in the gipsy eyes that looked into hers. Sheer horror sprang into her own. "Oh, but I can't--I can't!" she reiterated in an agony. "I don't love him. He knows it. I ought to have found out before, but I didn't. Mother--Mother--" piteously she began to plead--"you--you can't want to make me marry a man I don't love? You--you would never--surely--have done such a thing yourself!" Mrs. Bathurst made a sharp gesture as if something had pierced her. She shook the shoulder she grasped. "Love!" she said. "Oh, don't talk to me of love! Do you imagine--have you ever imagined--that I married that fox-hunting booby--for love?" A great and terrible bitterness that was like the hunger of a famished animal looked out of her eyes. Dinah gazed at her aghast. What new and horrible revelation was this? She felt suddenly sick and giddy. Her mother shook her again roughly, savagely. "None of that!" she said. "Don't think I'll put up with it, my fine lady, for I won't! What has love to do with such a chance as this? Tell me that, you little fool! Do you suppose that either you or I have ever been in a position to marry--for love?" Her face was darkly passionate. Dinah felt as if she were in the clutches of a tigress. "What--what do you mean?" she faltered through her quivering lips. "What do I mean?" Mrs. Bathurst broke into a sudden brutal laugh. "Ha! What do I mean?" she said. "I'll tell you, shall I? Yes, I'll tell you! I'll show you the shame that I've covered all these years. I mean that I married because of you--for no other reason. I married because I'd been betrayed--and left. Now do you understand why it isn't for you to pick and choose--you who have been the plague-spot of my life, the thorn in my side ever since you first stirred there--a perpetual reminder of what I would have given my very soul to forget? Do you understand, I say? Do you understand? Or must I put it plainer still? You--the child of my shame--to dare to set yourself up against me!" She ended upon what was almost a note of loathing, and Dinah shuddered from head to foot. It was to her as if she had been rolled in pitch. She felt overwhelmed with the cruel degradation of it, the unspeakable shame. Mrs. Bathurst watched her anguished distress with a species of bitter satisfaction. "That'll take the fight out of you, my girl," she said. "Or if it doesn't, I've another sort of remedy yet to try. Now, you start on that letter, do you hear? It'll be a bit shaky, but none the worse for that. Write and tell him you've changed your mind! Beg him humble-like to take you back!" But Dinah only bowed her head upon her hands and sat crushed. Mrs. Bathurst gave her a few seconds to recover her balance. Then again mercilessly she shook her by the shoulder. "Come, Dinah! I'm not going to be defied. Are you going to write that letter at once? Or must I take stronger measures?"