“I have known calls,” he replied impressively, “to higher duties come out of palaces. In fact they generally do. Duties dwindle with the rent. I don’t mean a bribe, but I suggest an opening. You have remarkable powers, Hermione, and there are opportunities in Europe just now which may not occur again, and which, if you hanker after celebrity, would pick and dry it for you while you waited. I might be able—if I saw the point of it—to push some of these opportunities your way.” Hermione looked at Mr. Brett. Something flashed into her eyes, and was gone again in a moment. She was an ambitious woman and hitherto she had had to practise her struggles in secret and alone. No one had ever seen her struggle, but though she had retained an outward and gracious passivity, Hermione had felt the strain of her efforts, and there were heights to which, without assistance, she could not, however gracefully, climb. Mr. Brett had never backed his family’s social yearnings before. He had markedly refrained from using his extraordinary powers for any personal purposes. He was making a great concession to his eldest daughter, and she knew it. Her heart beat faster than if she had been assisting at the process of a palpitation; then her innate violence of will reasserted itself. If she accepted any concession from her father, she must lay down her will as the price of it. Hermione shivered as if the room were cold. Her will was her religion—she called it for the moment, her cross. Hermione was of the stuff out of which persecutors are made. It is very nearly the same stuff which creates martyrs, except that in the case of martyrs vindictiveness does not appear essential. Hermione could bear much to keep her will intact, even the relinquishing of a life-long ambition; still she did not like relinquishing anything, and she breathed quickly; then she said with her voice a trifle strained and high, “I daresay you do not believe me, but my desire to save and protect Elise is stronger than any personal wish of my own.” Mr. Brett let his chair descend slowly and carefully from its precarious angle. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “if that is so, Hermione, carrots is dead.” Mr. Brett could talk perfectly good grammar when he chose, but he avoided it in the presence of his eldest daughter. The perfection of her own manner, he often observed, was distinction enough for any family. “I don’t know what else you think you can do against me,” said Hermione defensively, “but I warn you that if you attempt to drive me away from here I shall appeal to Elise, both against you—and against John! “You have apparently succeeded in poisoning his not very acute intellect against me, but my poor darling little sister will stand by me—whatever you may choose to say or do.”