"You suppose your father's overjoyed to have his delightfully _independent_ daughter thrown back on his hands--of course!" she was remarking. "True, you've heard him say a thousand times that he was going to sell his business as soon as you married and buy himself a place in the country and begin to have some pleasure of his own. But, of course, that was only his little joke! Yes, yes!" said mamma, brandishing her arms. "What he really wants is to go on slaving and toiling and worrying his heart out to keep you in pampered idleness and luxury, indulging your lightest whim without regard--" "Mamma, mamma!--do, please!" the girl broke in. "If papa has been working so hard on my account--and I didn't know that--then I don't want him to do it any more. I wish he would sell--" "Oh, I've no patience with your deathbed repentances! Don't you know your father's involved in serious worries at this moment, entirely on your account? Do you think a few dramatic speeches from you can undo--" "Worries on my account? No, I didn't know of any.... What worries?" Cally had stood listening with a kind of numbed listlessness, ready to go at the first opportunity, now that the real purpose of the interview was discharged. But suddenly she perceived a new pointedness in her mother's biting summaries; and she turned, with a slightly startled look in her eyes. Her mother returned the gaze with savage sarcasm. "Oh! You never heard of the Labor Commissioner and his hired character-assassin, I suppose! Never--" "Yes, but I didn't know any of that was on my account." "No, no, indeed! You thought it was just a little whim of your father's to keep his factory in a condition that's been a scandal in the community. Fighting off legislation--bribing inspectors--just his little bits of eccentric self-indulgence. You thought that ten thousand dollars I gave to the Settlement grew on a tree, I suppose. You--" "Mamma," said Cally, in a strained voice, "what on earth are you talking about? I want to understand. What did that money you gave to the Settlement have to do--" "Don't you _know_ he needed it for his business?" cried mamma, advancing menacingly. "I tell you he'd put it by to spend it on the Works this fall, and stop these attacks on him. And why did I have to take it from him, but on _your_ account, miss?--to try to clear the family name from the scandal you brought upon us--" "_What_?" "A scandal," continued mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father his presidency at the bank." The good lady easily saw that she had struck the right punitive note at last. Indeed, the question now, Cally's peculiarities being considered, was whether she had not struck it rather too hard. The girl's face had suddenly become the color of paper. The intense concentration of her gaze was painful in its way, slightly disconcerting to mamma.