Many a time she had seen him box Lydia's ears and, mild as she was, had been glad to see him do it. But it was his violence that undid him. It was then that Lydia became suddenly dignified and, unbroken, contrived to make him appear like a brute. There is nothing really more unbreakable than a child who considers neither her physical well-being nor public opinion. An older person, however violent, has learned that he must consider such questions, and it is a weakness in a campaign of violence to consider anything but the desired end. And on the whole Thorne lost. He could make Lydia do or refrain from doing specific acts--at least he could when he was at home. He had not permitted her at ten to keep her great Danes nor at thirteen to drive a high-stepping hackney in a red-wheeled cart which she ordered for herself without consultation with anyone. The evening after that struggle was over he had asked Miss Bennett to marry him. She knew why he did it. Lydia in the course of the row had referred to her as a paid companion. He had long been considering it as a sensible arrangement, particularly in case of his death. Miss Bennett refused him. She tried to think that she had been tempted by his offer, but she was not. To her he seemed a violent man who had been a bricklayer, and she always breathed a sigh of relief when he was out of the house. She was glad that he did not press the point, but in after years it was a solid comfort to her to remember that she might have been Lydia's stepmother if she had chosen. But it was in the long-drawn-out contest that Thorne failed. He could not make Lydia keep governesses that she didn't like. Her method was simple--she made their lives so disagreeable that nothing could make them stay. He never succeeded in getting her to boarding school, though he and Miss Bennett, after a long conference, decided that that was the thing to do. But that failure was partly due to his failing health. That was their last great struggle. He died in 1912. In his will he left Miss Bennett ten thousand a year, with the request that she stay with his daughter until her marriage. It touched Miss Bennett that he should have seen that she could not have stayed if she had been dependent on Lydia's capricious will. It was this that made her position possible--the fact that they both knew she could go in an instant if she wanted; not that she ever doubted that Lydia was sincerely attached to her. CHAPTER III When Lydia ran upstairs to dress everything was waiting for her--the lights lit, the fires crackling, her bath drawn, her underclothes and stockings folded on a chair, her green-and-gold dress spread out upon the bed, her narrow gold slippers standing exactly parallel on the floor beside it, and in the midst Evans, like a priestess waiting to serve the altar of a goddess, was standing with her eyes on the clock. [Illustration: LYDIA LITTLE REALIZES WHAT A TEMPTATION SHE IS PLACING BEFORE EVANS.]