"Bright side, indeed!" taunted the colonel. "A pretty bright side you'll find developing before long. Not that I begrudge my own children any advantages; I should think Henrietta ought to have known that. No, what I resent, and quite rightly too, is the public lack of confidence in me that she has been at such pains to show; that's the point." "The point is," thought Mrs. Ogden, "whether Joan will now be in a position to go to Cambridge. This business will play directly into Elizabeth's hands." Aloud she said: "Am I to tell the children, James?" "You can tell them any damn thing you please. If you don't tell them they'll hear about it from somebody else, I suppose; but I warn you fairly that when you do tell them, you can add that I intend to preserve absolute discipline in my household, I'll have no one living under the roof with me who don't realize that I'm the master." "But, my dear James," his wife protested, "they're nothing but children still; I don't suppose for a moment they'll understand what it means. I don't suppose it would ever enter their heads to want to defy you." 2 She turned and left the room, going slowly downstairs. The children were still at breakfast when she reached the dining-room. As they looked up, something in their mother's expression told them of an unusual occurrence; it was an expression in which pride, apprehension and excitement were oddly mingled. Mrs. Ogden sat down at the head of the table and cleared her throat. "I have very serious news for you, children," she began. "Your Aunt Henrietta is dead." The children evinced no emotion; they had heard of their Aunt Henrietta in America, but she had never been more than a name. Mrs. Ogden glanced from one to the other of her daughters; she did not quite know how to explain to them the full significance of the news, and yet she did not wish to keep it back. Her maternal pride and generosity struggled with her outraged dignity. She felt the situation to be quite preposterous, and in a way she sympathized with her husband's indignation; she was of his own generation, after all. Yet knowing him as she did, she felt a guilty and secret understanding of Henrietta Peabody's motive. She told herself that if only she were perfectly certain of Joan, she could find it in her to be grateful to the departed Henrietta. She began to speak again. "I have something very important to tell you. It's something that affects both of you. It seems that your Aunt Henrietta, apart from her pension, had an income of three hundred pounds a year, and this three hundred a year she has left equally divided between you. That means that you will have one hundred and fifty pounds a year each from now on." Her eyes were eagerly scanning Joan's face. Joan saw their appeal, though she did not understand it; she left her place slowly and put her arm round her mother. Milly clapped her hands. "A hundred and fifty a year and all my own!" she cried delightedly.