f;
otherwise he would do nothing.

Pierston could not help being sarcastic at her father's evidently low
estimate of him and his belongings; and Marcia took umbrage at his
sarcasms.

'I am the one deserving of satire if anybody!' she said. 'I begin to
feel I was a foolish girl to run away from a father for such a trumpery
reason as a little scolding because I had exceeded my allowance.'

'I advised you to go back, Marcie.'

'In a sort of way: not in the right tone. You spoke most contemptuously
of my father's honesty as a merchant.'

'I couldn't speak otherwise of him than I did, I'm afraid, knowing
what--'.

'What have you to say against him?'

'Nothing--to you, Marcie, beyond what is matter of common notoriety.
Everybody knows that at one time he made it the business of his life to
ruin my father; and the way he alludes to me in that letter shows that
his enmity still continues.'

'That miser ruined by an open-handed man like my father!' said she. 'It
is like your people's misrepresentations to say that!'

Marcia's eyes flashed, and her face burnt with an angry heat, the
enhanced beauty which this warmth might have brought being killed by the
rectilinear sternness of countenance that came therewith.

'Marcia--this temper is too exasperating! I could give you every step of
the proceeding in detail--anybody could--the getting the quarries one
by one, and everything, my father only holding his own by the most
desperate courage. There is no blinking facts. Our parents' relations
are an ugly fact in the circumstances of us two people who want to
marry, and we are just beginning to perceive it; and how we are going to
get over it I cannot tell.'

She said steadily: 'I don't think we shall get over it at all!'

'We may not--we may not--altogether,' Pierston murmured, as he gazed
at the fine picture of scorn presented by his Juno's classical face and
dark eyes.

'Unless you beg my pardon for having behaved so!'

Pierston could not quite bring himself to see that he had behaved badly
to his too imperious lady, and declined to ask forgiveness for what he
had not done.

She thereupon left the room. Later in the day she re-entered and broke
a silence by saying bitterly: 'I showed temper just now, as you told me.
But things have causes, and it is perhaps a mistake that you should have
deserted Avice for me. Instead of wedding Rosaline, Romeo must needs
go eloping with Juliet. It was a fortunate thing for the af