“Your worst must be pretty bad if that is your best. After I’ve strained my every effort to bring to you one of the richest young men in London, you might at least pretend that his presence is welcome; but if he were the devil himself you couldn’t show greater reluctance at meeting him or greater relief at his departure.” “Mother!” said the girl, and her eyes were filled with tears. “Don’t ‘mother’ me, please!” said Mrs. Cathcart deliberately. “I am sick to death of your faddiness and your prejudices. What on earth do you want? What am I to get you?” She threw out her arms in exasperated despair. “I don’t want to marry at all,” said the girl in a low voice. “My father would never have forced me to marry.” It was a daring thing to say, an exhibition of greater boldness than she had ever shown before in her encounters with her mother. But lately there had come to her a new courage. That despair which had made her dumb glowed now to rage, the fires of rebellion smouldered in her heart; and, albeit the demonstrations of her growing resentment were few and far between, her courage grew upon her venturing. “Your father!” breathed Mrs. Cathcart, white with rage, “am I to have your father thrown at my head? Your father was a fool! A fool!” She almost hissed the word. “He ruined me as he ruined you because he hadn’t sufficient sense to keep the money he had inherited. I thought he was a clever man. I looked up to him for twenty years as the embodiment of all that was wise and kind and genial, and all those twenty years he was frittering away his competence on every hair-brained scheme which the needy adventurers of finance brought to him. He would not have forced you! I swear he wouldn’t!” She laughed bitterly. “He would have married you to the chauffeur if your heart was that way inclined. He was all amiability and incompetence, all good-nature and inefficiency. I hate your father!” Her blue eyes were opened to their widest extent and the cold glare of hate was indeed apparent to the shrinking girl. “I hate him every time I have to entertain a shady stockbroker for the advantage I may receive from his knowledge of the market; I hate him for every economy I have to practise; I hate him every time I see my meagre dividends come in and as I watch them swallowed up by the results of his folly. Don’t make me hate you,” she said, pointing a warning finger at the girl. Edith had cowered before the torrent of words, but this slander of her dead father roused something within her, put aside all fear of consequence, even though that consequence might be a further demonstration of that anger which she so dreaded. Now she stood erect, facing the woman she called mother, her face pale, but her chin tilted a little defiantly.