“Then you will be so good as to explain to me what you did say, or rather what you meant, which is more important still,” Sir Robert said. “I meant--just what I have always meant,” said Lily, drawing back her chair a little and fixing her eyes upon her foot, which beat the floor with a nervous movement. “And what is that?” he asked. Lily drew back a little more, her foot ceased to tap, her hands clasped each other. She looked up into his face with half-reproachful eyes full of meaning. “Oh, Uncle Robert, you know!” Sir Robert jumped up from his chair, and then sat down again. Demonstrations of wrath were of no use. He felt inclined to cry, “You little cutty!” again, but did not. He puffed out a quick breath, which was a sign of great impatience, yet self-repression. “You mean, I suppose, that things are exactly as they were--that you mean to pay no attention to my representations, that you choose your own will above mine--notwithstanding that I have complete power over you, and can do with you what I will?” “Nobody can do that,” said Lily, only half aloud. “I am not a doll,” she said, “Uncle Robert. You have the power--so that I don’t like to disobey you.” “But do it all the same!” he cried. “Not if I can help it. I would like to do it. I would like to be independent. It seems dreadful that one should be obliged to do, not what one wishes, but what another person wills. But you have the power----” “Of the ways and means,” he said; “I have the purse-strings in my hand.” It was Lily’s turn now to start to her feet. “Oh, how mean of you, how base of you!” she said. “You, a great man and a soldier, and me only a girl. To threaten me with your purse-strings! As if I cared for your purse-strings. Give it all away from me; give it all--that’s what I should like best. I will go away with Beenie, and we’ll sew, or do something else for our living. I’m very fond of poultry--I could be a henwife; or there are many other things that I could do. Give it all away! Tie them up tight. I just hate your money and your purse-strings. I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea!” “You would find things very different if they were, I can tell you,” he said, with a snort. “Oh, yes, very different. I would be free. I would take my own way. I would have nobody to tyrannize over me. Oh, uncle! forgive me! forgive me! I did not mean to say that! If you were poor, I would take care of you. I would remember you were next to my father, and I would do any thing you could say.” He kept his eyes fixed on her as she stood thus, defiant yet compunctious, before him. “I don’t doubt for a moment you would do every thing that was most senseless and imprudent,” he said. Then Lily dropped into her chair and cried a little--partly that she could not help it, partly that it was a weapon of war like another--and gained a little time. But Sir Robert was not moved by her crying; she had not, indeed, expected that he would be.