I kept down my tone, though I couldn't master my excitement. "That's not my reason. If I don't marry him it's precisely because I have the power. There are people--cowards they are at heart, as a rule--who because they have the power use it to be insolent, especially to those who are weaker. I'm not one of those. There's a _noblesse oblige_ that compels one in spite of everything. In dealing with an elderly man, who I suppose loves his son, and with a lady who's been so kind to me as Mrs. Rossiter--" "You've been hired, and you're paid. There's no special call for gratitude." "Gratitude is in the person who feels it; but that isn't what I specially want to say." "What you specially want to say apparently is--" "That I'm not afraid of you, sir; I'm not afraid of your family or your money or your position or anything or any one you can control. If I don't marry Hugh, it's for the reason that I've given, and for no other. As long as he's dependent on your money I shall not marry him till you come and beg me to do it--and that I shall expect of you." He smiled tolerantly. "That is, till you've brought us to our knees." I could barely pipe, but I stood to my guns. "If you like the expression, sir--yes. I shall not marry Hugh--so long as you support him--till I've brought you to your knees." If I expected the heavens to fall at this I was disappointed. All J. Howard did was to lean on his arm toward Mrs. Billing and talk to her privately. Mrs. Rossiter got up and went to her father, entering also into a whispered colloquy. Once or twice he glanced backward to his wife, but she was now gazing sidewise in the direction of the house and over the lines of flowers that edged the terraces. When Mrs. Rossiter had gone back to her seat, and J. Howard had raised himself from his conversation with Mrs. Billing, he began again to address me tranquilly: "I hoped you might have sympathized with my hopes for Hugh, and have helped to convince him how useless his plans for a marriage between him and you must be." I answered with decision: "No; I can't do that." "I should have appreciated it--" "That I can quite understand." "And some day have shown you that I'm acting for your good." "Oh, sir," I cried, "whatever else you do, you'll let my good be my own affair, will you not?" I thought I heard Mrs. Billing say, "Brava!" At any rate, she tapped her fingers together as if in applause. I began to feel a more lenient spirit toward her. "I'm quite willing to do that," my opponent said, in a moderate, long-suffering tone, "now that I see that you refuse to take Hugh's good into consideration. So long as you encourage him in his present madness--" "I'm not doing that." He took no notice of the interruption. "--I'm obliged to regard him as nothing to me." "That must be between you and your son." "It is. I'm only asking you to note that you--ruin him." "No, no," I began to protest, but he silenced me with a movement of his hand.