etsy! my dear, my dear!" wailed her mother, "don't use such
language. Oh, oh, you and your father are killing me!"

"Mother, mother, have you no feeling for your daughter, that you have
said no word to help her in all these months? Are you so under the
thrall of that tyrant that you meekly submit without a protest to such
treatment of me? Yes," she said, turning to her father, who stood
motionless, his eyes blazing, his face white with passion, "you are a
tyrant, but I defy you. You shall not break my spirit. I mean to marry
Abner Logan as soon as he says the word."

"Be silent, before I strike you!" cried her father, advancing toward
her. "Go! Fling yourself into your lover's arms as soon as you please.
I wash my hands of you, you willful, passionate hussy!"

"Stop! stop! this instant, Hiram Gilcrest," shrieked his wife, rising
from her chair and stamping her foot. Then she rushed to him, caught
his arm and actually shook him, crying: "You shall not heap such abuse
on my child! I have been silent long enough."

If the portrait of old Silas Gilcrest, hanging above the mantel, had
opened its mouth and spoken, father and daughter could not have been
more astounded than at this outbreak. In the whole course of her
married life this was the first time that Jane Gilcrest had ever
asserted herself, or raised her voice against her lord and master.
"Yes, you are a brute to use such language and to treat your daughter
so! And now, I suppose you'll beat me, next; you look as though you'd
like to fell us both to the earth with that whip--oh! oh! oh!" she
shrieked, and fell back in a swoon.

Betsy, white, unnerved, and more frightened than she had ever been in
her life, sprang to her mother's aid, who recovered from her faint only
to go into violent hysterics. Gilcrest stood dazed and motionless,
staring at his wife, with the riding-whip unconsciously clenched in his
hand.

[Illustration: _At this juncture the door was flung open by old
Dilsey._]

At this juncture, the door was flung open by old Dilsey. She stood a
second on the threshold, as though paralyzed at the tableau before her.
Mrs. Gilcrest leaned back in her chair, moaning and trembling; Betsy
crouched by her side, in reality trying to pacify her mother, though
apparently seeking shelter from her father, who stood before them with
the uplifted whip. Then, her black eyes blazing, the negress sprang
forward with the swiftness and fierceness of a tiger; and charging