This intangible, this invincible force, that swayed all she knew, swayed Margaret also. Though she denied it to herself, saying that she was young and her life her own, she believed it in her heart. All her experience contributed to this belief--the house with the wonderful attics and passages which she and her mother had wanted to buy, but which her father had rejected because its reception-rooms were not magnificent enough to receive the guests of Ibble and Co.; the sending of Hugh into the Navy because, since his intellect seemed unlikely to qualify him for inclusion in the firm, it would be as well to have a representative among the customers of Ibble and Co. Ibble’s was their God. Even her father, who was said to have the controlling interest, was himself controlled, working in sickness and health, growing tired and hollow-eyed and nervous, all for the sake of Ibble and Co. Once he had been seriously ill. “I wish you would retire, Walter,” her mother had said. “Surely we have money enough? Haven’t we every material thing we want? Couldn’t you come out of it now? Couldn’t we go back to the old days before Ibble’s----” “Come out of it!” her father had answered. “My dear, I can’t give in yet. Besides, I have my duty to do by Ibble and Co.” They had thought Margaret too young to understand, but she had understood something of the tragedy, for already Ibble’s foundries were her Hell; and now she remembered it. And she was to play it out with Nick Ordith. Some day he would be, not Ordith the individual, but Ordith’s, the firm and the tradition. Ibble and Ordith, Ordith and Ibble.... She had read in her mother’s mind concerning the amalgamation, and knew what was planned but not spoken of. Her marriage likewise was planned but not spoken of. After all, she asked herself, making a little kick within the mesh, what had her marriage to do with Ibble’s? But what, too, had the attics and passages in which she would have liked to play had to do with Ibble’s? She had but to say “No” to Ordith, she repeated--one word, one resolve. Often, when her thoughts returned to this point, she would laugh at herself as we laugh when we know we have uttered an empty boast; and sometimes while she laughed there were tears in her eyes. CHAPTER IX QUARTERED ON THE KINGDOM I