He paused to note the effect of his words and saw that he had scored. Poor Mrs. Barrington, struggling vaguely and darkly in her own feminine way for some form of self-expression, had spent her household allowance many a time on futile odds and ends. She had haunted the bargain counter, and had found herself unable to get over the idea that a thing cheaply purchased was an economic triumph. So in drawers and chests and boxes she had packed her pathetic loot--odds and ends of embroidery, of dress goods, of passementerie, of chair coverings; dozens of spools of thread and crochet cotton; odd dishes; jars of cold cream; flotsam and jetsam of the shops, a mere wreckage of material. Kate remembered it with vicarious shame and the blood that flowed to her face swept on into her brain. She flamed with loyalty to that little dead, bewildered woman, whose feet had walked so falteringly in her search for the roses of life. And she said-- But what matter what she said? Her father and herself were at the antipodes, and they were separated no less by their similarities than by their differences. Their wistful and inexpressive love for each other was as much of a blight upon them as their inherent antagonism. The sun went down that bleak Christmas night on a house divided openly against itself. The next day Kate told her father he might look for some one else to run his house for him. He said he had already done so. He made no inquiry where she was going. He would not offer her money, though he secretly wanted her to ask for it. But it was past that with her. The miserable, bitter drama--the tawdry tragedy, whose most desperate accent was its shameful approach to farce--wore itself to an end. Kate took her mother's jewelry, which had been left to her, and sold it at the local jeweler's. All Silvertree knew that Kate Barrington had left her home in anger and that her father had shown her the back of his hand. IV Honora Fulham, sitting in her upper room and jealously guarding the slumbers of Patience and Patricia, her tiny but already remarkable twin daughters, heard a familiar voice in the lower hallway. She dropped her book, "The Psychological Significance of the Family Group," and ran to the chamber door. A second later she was hanging over the banisters. "Kate!" she called with a penetrating whisper. "You!" "Yes, Honora, it's bad Kate. She's come to you--a penny nobody else wanted."