dn't
mean you, of course. I'm glad to be your child; but, oh, why did you
marry that man? Now, if you had only married Uncle Howroyd.'

'Seein' that I 'ave married 'im, an' that 'e's your father, it's no use
talkin' about such things. An', dear, 'e's not as bad as 'e might be. 'E
doesn't drink nor beat me,' she said.

'Mother, you talk as if he were a coalheaver,' cried her daughter
indignantly.

''E wasn't a coalheaver; but 'e was a mill-'and, an' I was a milliner's
girl in a little shop in London w'en I married 'im, an' I 'adn't a
farthing. An' look at the beautiful 'ouse I'm mistress o' now, an' look
at the money 'e spends on you an' me both--never stints us for anythin'!
I'm sure you ought to be grateful to 'im. I am, for I never expected to
rise to this w'en I was a milliner's 'prentice in London.'

'You needn't talk about that. It's bad enough to be a vulgar
millionaire's daughter,' replied the girl, and at the same time she
dropped from the window-seat and came towards her mother; adding, 'Well,
if you want me to come down to dinner I suppose I must ring for Naomi.
It's an awful nuisance, and I shall probably have a row with the pater.'

Mrs Clay was going to plead with her daughter as she had with her son;
but Sarah, who had suggested dressing partly to get rid of her mother,
pointed to the clock, and Mrs Clay hurried away to get ready for dinner
herself.

CHAPTER II.

A DREARY BANQUET.

After the mother had left the room, her daughter seemed in no hurry to
get ready for dinner; she turned back to the window, and, taking up her
old position on the wide window-seat, sat gazing down at the hideous view
of the big manufacturing town, with blackened buildings and tall, smoky
chimneys, which lay at the bottom of the hill, and seemed to have a weird
fascination for her. It must certainly have been from choice that Sarah
Clay looked at them, for she had only to sit at the other side of the
broad window-seat, turn her back on Ousebank, and, looking out on the
other side of the hill, she would have had a beautiful view over the hill
of pretty vales and villages and smiling pasture, and their own fine
park; but the girl deliberately turned her back upon nature, and looked
not upon art--for art there was not in Ousebank except what was produced
in the mills--but upon nature perverted by man, who had turned the
beautiful vale into a Black Country with its big factories, which
polluted earth and sky, air an