paper. His creditors can snap their fingers at any will. That's what
Leonore means. She's found it out, and flies post haste to her desk to
write that she must come back here."

"So she must."

"So she must _not_. I won't have it. The whole neighbourhood would ring
with it."

"By your own showing," said Sue quietly, "in order to free yourself from
the necessity of making any provision on your part when the marriage
took place, you precluded----" but she got no further.

"Provision on my part?" burst forth her father, who was now himself
again, and ready to browbeat anybody; "what need had the girl of any
provision on my part? She was marrying a fellow with tenfold my income.
The little I could have contrived to spare would have been a mere drop
in the bucket to him, and I should have been ashamed to mention it. I
can tell you I felt monstrous uncomfortable having to approach the
subject at all; and never was more thankful than when the young man,
like the decent fellow I took him then to be, pitchforked the whole
business overboard."

"All the same, it is quite plain," persevered she, "that it was with
your consent and approbation that Leonore had no money settled on her,
so that it could not be taken from her now;--and that being the case,
you have no choice but to provide for her in the future."

"You mean to say that it's due to me your sister's left a pauper on our
hands?"

"That's exactly what I do mean. And you must either give her enough to
enable her to live properly elsewhere, or receive her back among us, as
she herself suggests. Besides which, you must make her the same
allowance you make the rest of us," and the speaker rose, closing the
controversy.

Only she could have carried it on to such a close, indeed only General
Boldero's eldest daughter--and only daughter by his first
marriage--would have engaged in it at all. The younger girls, of whom
there were still two unmarried and living at home, never, in common
parlance, stood up to their father--though, if he had not been as blind
as such an autocrat is wont to be, he would have easily detected that
they had their own ways of rendering his tyrannical rule tolerable, and
that while he fancied himself the sole dictator of his house, he had in
fact neither part nor lot in its real existence.

What is more easily satisfied than the vanity of stupid importance
always upon its perch? The general's habits and hours were known, also
the few points up