iting chivalrous forbearance.

"You are very hard," she lamented, "and you are always inclined to side
with the servants against me. You seem to take pleasure in undermining
my influence, while I am so ready and anxious to devote myself to you.
You know there is nothing, nothing I would not do for you and--and for
Sir Charles."

Theresa choked, coughed, holding her handkerchief to her eyes.

"And what reward do I meet with?" she asked brokenly. "At every turn I am
thwarted. But you must give way in this case, Damaris. Positively you
must. I cannot allow myself to be publicly discredited through your
self-will. I promised the horses for the extra brake. The offer was made
and accepted--accepted, you understand, actually accepted. What will the
vicar say if the arrangement is upset? What will every one think?"

Damaris pushed her chair back from the table and rose to her
feet.--Forbearance wore threadbare under accusation and complaint. No,
Theresa was not only a little too abject, but a little too disingenuous,
thereby putting herself beyond the pale of rightful sympathy. Even while
she protested devotion, self looked out seeking personal advantage. And
that devotion, in itself, shocked Damaris' sense of fitness where it
involved her father. It wasn't Theresa's place to talk of devotion
towards him!

Moreover the young girl began to feel profoundly impatient of all this to
do and bother. For wasn't the whole affair, very much of a storm in a
teacup, petty, paltry, quite unworthy of prolonged discussion such as
this? She certainly thought so, in her youthful fervour and inexperience;
while--the push of awakening womanhood giving new colour and richness
to her conception of life--nature cried out for a certain extravagance in
heroism, in largeness of action of aspiration. She was athirst for noble
horizons, in love with beauty, with the magnificence of things, seen and
unseen alike. In love with superb objectives even if only to be reached
through a measure of suffering, and--searching, arresting, though the
thought was to her--possibly through peril of death.

In such moods there is small room for a Bilson regime and outlook. A
flavour of scorn marked her tone as she answered at last:

"Oh, you can lay the blame on me--or rather tell the truth, which amounts
to the same thing. Say that, my father being away, I refused my consent
to the horses being taken out. Say you appealed to me but I was
hopelessly obstinate. I