“Like you better? My poor child, it is the love I have for you that causes me to endeavour, in my humble way,--praying that my efforts may be blessed by a Higher Power,--to correct those faults that will be your undoing some day.” “I am speaking of what my father thinks. The moment he finds things are just as bad as they ever were, then all your hold over me is gone. I am now trying to bear patiently and uncomplainingly all I have to put up with in this house, and I do so for no other reason than to save my father unnecessary trouble. You say I am proud, resentful, stubborn, and all that. I am far worse than even you have any idea of. It makes me shudder to think of the kind of woman I shall become if I am much longer under your sway. I feel like a hypocrite when I remain silent under your taunts, for I think such things that if I were to put them in words----well, we won’t talk of that. If you imagine that I have learned meekness because I have lived in a really Christian family for two years, you are very much mistaken; but I have learned that true Christianity does not consist in nagging, with a text at the end of every exasperating sentence. Now, being a woman, I understand you very much better than my father does. You said once that, if he chose me to be mistress of this house, you would lay down your keys and depart without a murmur. You would do nothing of the kind. You would fight for your place. Therefore I want you to understand thoroughly what you may expect if you appeal to my father. The moment you complain of me in any way, or lead him to think there is the least friction, I shall go to him and say that I must be mistress here. What will happen then?--you know as well as I do. So long as he is not troubled with our affairs, I shall say nothing, and will try to be as dutiful and obedient as if I were your own daughter.” Mrs. Sartwell sat down, buried her face in her hands, and wept softly, as one does whose tenderest feelings are wounded. It was hard that, after having a lifelong contest with one stubborn person, resulting in a most uncertain and unsatisfactory victory,--if it could be called a victory at all,--she should be called upon to face the same problem over again. She knew that if Edna appealed to her father anything might happen. He would be brute enough to take another house somewhere, and live in peace with his daughter. The man was capable of anything, in spite of all the precepts she had flung away upon him. However, there was still the consolation that she might save the girl by earnest and devoted persistence in well-doing, and she knew Edna would not protest so long as her father was unmolested: so Mrs. Sartwell agreed that her husband should not be made the referee between them, and Peace once more folded her white wings over the happy home.