“Look here, young woman,” he admonished her, “do you realize that you are at large but by my clemency?” And then, before the doctor’s daughter could give voice to her indifference as to exposure and her continued and accentuated scorn of him, he held up a benign hand. “Do not tremble, maiden. Your dark treachery is safe with me.” It was the manner of a feudal lord withholding punishment from a criminal vassal, and it infuriated Glen Darrow. “I may, of course, decide later to make an example of you, for what my parent would call the principle of the thing, but I can assure you, for your comfort, that your present exemplary conduct is steadily softening my rage. The respect and admiration which you find it impossible to conceal, the pretty timidity of your approach, your shy advances--” He ceased, and shook his head sadly. “Now, I ask you, Gloriana-Virginia, do you consider it well bred for her to quit the apartment in such a truculent manner, banging the door behind her?” “Oh, suh,” Gloriana-Virginia pleaded, “Glen, she’s so moughty sweet and mannerly, most whiles! I kaint _see_ why she acts so ornery to yo’all!” “Do you think it is possible, Glory,” he inquired gravely, “that she doesn’t _like_ me?” The child hung her head. “’Taint in reason, suh, but Glen, she--she jes pintly b’lieves eva’thing Super tells her.” “Ah, and Super tells her----” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Super, I heard him tell her yo’all was allus hollering fo’ money. I jes’ pintly know that’s a sinful lie, suh. Hit’s true in reason yo’ got to have plenty fo’ yo’ sweet and sightly cloze, but I know in time yo’ wouldn’t never be mean about hit!” She lifted her wise little monkey eyes from a rapturous contemplation of his purple and fine linen to give him a smile of confidence. That was, perhaps, the thing which enraged the superintendent’s assistant more than anything else--the way in which Gloriana-Virginia and Beany and old Pap Tolliver, and a dozen other mill children adored him. She strove with them, conscientiously, but while they listened obediently they clearly disbelieved her. It was bitterly unjust, she told herself, after all her concern for them, her fight for them, after all that her father had done--to have them follow him as the youngsters of Hamelin had followed the Piper. A silly joke, a supposedly funny grimace, and they burst into shrieks of laughter scarce in their languid lives; a tray of ice-cream cones and they pattered after him like puppies; selling their birthright of hatred for a mess of patronage. Gloriana-Virginia raptly and tediously worshiped him, but there was a small grain of satisfaction in the fact that Henry Clay Bean, though sharing his cousin’s affection for the junior partner, evidently considered him as tiresomely silly as she did herself. Not a giggle, not a chuckle, not a smile, could young Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena wrest from him, though he tried with the persistence of a vaudevillian plugging a new act.