“Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!” she cried. “They say even tigers care for their young! But you--you can say that to _me_. 'When a man's dead, it's too late.'” “It _is_ too late--it IS too late!” Lady Mallowe persisted. Why had not she struck this note before? It was breaking her will: “I would say anything to bring you to your senses.” Joan began to move restlessly to and fro. “Oh, what a fool I am!” she exclaimed. “As if you could understand--as if you could care!” Struggle as she might to be defiant, she was breaking, Lady Mallowe repeated to herself. She followed her as a hunter might have followed a young leopardess with a wound in its flank. “I came here because it _is_ your last chance. Palliser knew what he was saying when he made a joke of it just now. He knew it wasn't a joke. You might have been the Duchess of Merthshire; you might have been Lady St. Maur, with a husband with millions. And here you are. You know what's before you--when I am out of the trap.” Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no sense in it. “I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia's Home for Decayed Gentlewomen,” she said. Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely. “Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to live in,” she retorted. Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that was new. “You may as well tell me,” she said, wearily. “I have had a letter from Sir Moses Monaldini. He is to be at Broome Haughton. He is going there purposely to meet me. What he writes can mean only one thing. He means to ask me to marry him. I'm your mother, and I'm nearly twenty years older than you; but you see that I'm out of the trap first.” “I knew you would be,” answered Joan. “He detests you,” Lady Mallowe went on. “He will not hear of your living with us--or even near us. He says you are old enough to take care of yourself. Take my advice. I am doing you a good turn in giving it. This New York newsboy is mad over you. If he hadn't been we should have been bundled out of the house before this. He never has spoken to a lady before in his life, and he feels as if you were a goddess. Go into the billiard-room this instant, and do all a woman can. Go!” And she actually stamped her foot on the carpet. Joan's thunder-colored eyes seemed to grow larger as she stared at her. Her breast lifted itself, and her face slowly turned pale. Perhaps--she thought it wildly--people sometimes did die of feelings like this. “He would crawl at your feet,” her mother went on, pursuing what she felt sure was her advantage. She was so sure of it that she added words only a fool or a woman half hysteric with rage would have added. “You might live in the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the income he could have given you.”