r the first time she recovered her voice. It was a wild mingling of
frustrated wrath and outraged dignity, and for once she found that her
fluency had forsaken her. She had been taught--Hamilton had seen to
that--that when she spoke others should obey. She had not yet learned to
bow to even his autocracy.

"_Ham!_" she exclaimed tensely, though even now she spoke in a cautious
voice so that no echo might reach other ears. "Put me down! How dare
you?"

He did not answer the question; instead he asked another.

"Will you enter as mistress of the house or will you go in kicking?"

During a long defiant pause, their eyes held, both pairs unwavering;
then the girl said quietly: "I'll go in myself."

CHAPTER VI

Harrow had not overstated the facts when he said that it had been his
privilege to serve in families "where niceties were highly regarded." He
was the accomplished servant, seeing and hearing only such things as his
betters intended for his eyes and ears. If he had human emotions he
ordinarily revealed them only when his livery was doffed. Yet even the
impeccably correct serving man has his moments of weakness, and, as
Hamilton Burton left the room, he muttered low, but quite audibly, "My
God!" Then, feeling Carl Bristoll's chilling glance upon him, he sought
to cover his indiscretion in an apologetic cough.

But the secretary himself felt the disturbing uneasiness that had
prompted that exclamation. Hamilton Burton had been defied, and when
that occurred peace fled and punishment fell.

Evidently the girl upstairs, the girl just returned from years of study
and travel in Europe, had something of that same spirit which made her
brother's will a thing of adamant, but she had not done well to begin
her new life by measuring lances with the autocratic Hamilton. Probably
at the moment she was being reprimanded, perhaps rebuked into tears
which, since she was young and beautiful, became a disquieting thought.
Carl Bristoll felt the discomfort of the outsider in the shadow of a
family scene.

He would now have to meet Mary Burton under the most inauspicious
circumstances, and she would always remember that he had first seen her
with tear-stained eyes at a moment of humiliation and defeat. It was too
much to expect that a woman could forget this, and the young secretary
had the wish that it should be otherwise. So he sat rather moodily
contemplating his plate and when he heard steps on the stairs he was
su