“Come, Patita, don’t mind them,” said Rosita, putting her arm round her comrade. “The mean hateful nasty—_pigs!_” Never before had the indolent little Californian been so vehement; but Patience slipped from her hold, and running through a gate at the back of the yard crouched down on a box. Rosita’s words had broken the spell. She was filled with a volcano of hate. She hated the girls, she hated Monterey, she hated life; but above all she hated her mother. After a time all the hate in her concentrated on the woman who had made her young life so bitter. She had never liked her, but not until the dreadful moments just past had she realised the full measure of her inheritance. The innuendoes she had not understood, but it was enough to know that her mother had disgraced her publicly and insulted her father’s memory. Her schoolmates she dismissed from her mind with a scornful jerk of the shoulders. She had beaten them too easily and often in the schoolroom not to despise them consummately. They could prick but not stab her. The bell rang; but she had an account to settle, and bonnetless she started for home. Mrs. Sparhawk was sitting on the porch reading a novel when Patience walked up to her, snatched the book from her hand, and flung it into a rose-tree. The woman was sober, and quailed as she met her daughter’s eyes. Patience had walked rapidly under a hot sun. Her face was scarlet, and she was trembling. “I hate you!” she sobbed. “I hate you! It doesn’t do any good to tell you so, but it does me good to say it.” The girl looked the incarnation of evil passions. She was elemental Hate, a young Cain. “I wish you were dead,” she continued. “You’ve ruined every bit of my life.” “Why—what—what—” mumbled the woman. But the colour was coming to her face, and her eyes were beginning to glitter unpleasantly. “You know well enough what. You were in town drunk on Saturday night, and were in saloons _with a farm hand_. To make a brute of yourself was bad enough—but to go about with a common man! Are you going to marry him?” Mrs. Sparhawk laughed. “Well, I guess not.” Patience drew a quick breath of relief. “Well, that’s what they’re saying—that you’re going to marry him—a man that can’t read nor write. Now look here, I want one thing understood—unless you swear to me you’ll not set foot in that town again I’ll have you put in the Home of the Inebriates—There! I’ll not be disgraced again; I’ll do it.”