face—“just ask Chang!”

To Mrs. Richmond the words and the manner of them were like an impudent defiance. They drove her almost beside herself with alarm and anger. “Your father’ll soon bring you to terms! You’ll see, miss! You’ll see.” And she nodded her head, laughing viciously, an insane glitter in her bright, brown eyes. “Yes, you’ll find out!”

Beatrice was not in the least impressed.

“All father can do is to cut me off. I’ve got five thousand a year in my own right—enough to keep body[120] and soul together. So, he knows he’s powerless with me.”

[120]

“What a fool he was,” cried her mother, “to give you that money.”

“It isn’t altogether the money,” pursued Beatrice. “You’ve got nearly half a million put by out of the household allowances. And your jewels make as much more. Yet you’re afraid of him.”

Instead of becoming furious, Mrs. Richmond sank weakly back in her chair. “He’s my husband,” she said appealingly. “You don’t understand how much that means—not yet.”

Beatrice laughed softly. “No, but I’m beginning to,” said she. However, she did not pursue that branch of the subject—did not force her mother into the corner of admission that the real source of Richmond’s power over her was not wifely duty nor yet motherly feeling, but love of the vast and costly luxury which being Richmond’s indulged wife got for her. All the girl wished to accomplish was to reduce her mother to that pliable state of mind in which she would cease to be the active enemy of her projects. Mrs. Richmond was now down to that meek weakness; through the rest of their talk her manner toward her daughter was friendly, sisterly, remonstrant rather than denunciatory.

[121]“You don’t realize what is the matter with you, Beatrice,” said she.

[121]

“What is the matter with me?”

“You wouldn’t understand— I couldn’t explain— You have had no experience. If you had, you’d realize and control yourself.”

“All I know is, I must have him.”

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