herself more than once dangerously
at a loss. Yes, she would have been at a loss, puzzled, perhaps greatly
discouraged. She was face to face with a complication so extraordinary.

That one man, through mere persistent steadiness in evil temper and
domestic tyranny, should have so broken the creatures of his household
into abject submission and hopelessness, seemed too incredible. Such a
power appeared as remote from civilised existence in London and New York
as did that which had inflicted tortures in the dungeons of castles of
old. Prisoners in such dungeons could utter no cry which could reach the
outside world; the prisoners at Stornham Court, not four hours from Hyde
Park Corner, could utter none the world could hear, or comprehend if it
heard it. Sheer lack of power to resist bound them hand and foot. And
she, Betty Vanderpoel, was here upon the spot, and, as far as she could
understand, was being implored to take no steps, to do nothing. The
atmosphere in which she had spent her life, the world she had been
born into, had not made for fearfulness that one would be at any time
defenceless against circumstances and be obliged to submit to outrage.
To be a Vanderpoel was, it was true, to be a shining mark for envy as
for admiration, but the fact removed obstacles as a rule, and to find
one's self standing before a situation with one's hands, figuratively
speaking, tied, was new enough to arouse unusual sensations. She
recalled, with an ironic sense of bewilderment, as a sort of material
evidence of her own reality, the fact that not a week ago she had
stepped on to English soil from the gangway of a solid Atlantic liner.
It aided her to resist the feeling that she had been swept back into the
Middle Ages.

"When he is angry," was one of the first questions she put to Ughtred,
"what does he give as his reason? He must profess to have a reason."

"When he gets in a rage he says it is because mother is silly and
common, and I am badly brought up. But we always know he wants money,
and it makes him furious. He could kill us with rage."

"Oh!" said Betty. "I see."

"It began that time when he struck her. He said then that it was not
decent that a woman who was married should keep her own money. He made
her give him almost everything she had, but she wants to keep some for
me. He tries to make her get more from grandfather, but she will not
write begging letters, and she won't give him what she is saving for
me."