m an extraordinary outburst, but
Mr. Deland will not stop it. I am master here, and my will is law. I
mean to enforce it. My mind is made up. Shall I watch my boy Cyril grow
up into just another such maniac, think you? Until he has not rested
content but that the whole Highlands be lit with his precious
electricity--at the price of his father's fortune?... Paula, my
dear--m-my medicine----" He shook slightly, and then an ague took him
and he trembled. He dropped back into his chair, a huddled, shivering
old man in whom the power of his anger had burnt the frail spirit into a
mere husk of its former strength; and in an instant Lady Paula was upon
her feet, running round to him, and fumbling as she ran with her fingers
in her bodice.

"My dear!--my dear! You must not so excite yourself. It is not good for
you. Not right," she said soothingly, taking his head in her arms and
pillowing it against her breast; meanwhile with her other hand she
deftly unscrewed the top of a little bottle she had drawn from her
blouse, and shook out one tiny pellet, which she placed between his
trembling lips. "Take this, dearest, and you will feel better.... A
light drug, Mr. Deland, which the doctor orders at such times. Poor
dear!--poor dear! it is such a constant worry to him, this continuous
quarrel with his own flesh-and-blood. If you had really loved your
father, Ross----"

"As _you_ love him, no doubt I should be able to emulate your methods of
attack better," he returned, stung suddenly out of his bitter silence by
the reproach. "But I have been brought up in another school, Paula,
where we deal square blows that do not strike below the belt, and where
we do not let our ambitions play upon a flattered old man's affections
quite so cleverly or so perceptibly as you do!"

"Stop!"

The mischief was out, the damage was done, and in one moment that dull
and insignificant luncheon-table had been transformed into something
that was more like a third-rate melodrama than a family quarrel among
people of the better class. But the thing had been thrashed out so many
times before that politeness had worn thin, and each one spoke his mind
with a bitterness which left nothing to the imagination. Here was the
actual canker of a family's innermost heart, with all the outer covering
worn thin by constant bickerings and the whole ugly reality of the thing
starkly revealed.

Cleek's face went grim as he watched the blanched faces about the table.