I may quote
the story of Abraham turning the unbeliever out of his tent on a
stormy night. 'I have suffered him these hundred years,' was the Lord's
reproof, 'though he dishonored Me, and couldst thou not endure him for
one night?' I am sorry to distress you, but I must do what I know to be
right.

"Don't talk to me of right," exclaimed Mr. Fane-Smith with a shudder.
"You are wilfully putting your blaspheming father before Christ. But
I see my words are wasted. Let me pass! The air of this house is
intolerable to me!"

He hurried away, his anger flaming up again when Tom followed him,
closing the door of the cab with punctilious politeness. Rose was
frightened.

"Oh, papa," she said, trembling, "why are you so angry? You haven't been
scolding Erica about it? If there was any fault anywhere, the fault was
mine. What did you say to her, papa? What have you been doing?"

Mr. Fane-Smith was in that stage of anger when it is pleasant to repeat
all one's hot words to a second audience and, moreover, he wanted to
impress Rose with the enormity of her visit. He repeated all that he
had said to Erica, interspersed with yet harder words about her perverse
self-reliance and disregard for authority.

Rose listened, but at the end she trembled no longer. She had in her
a bit of the true Raeburn nature with its love of justice and its
readiness to stand up for the oppressed.

"Papa," she said, all her spoiled-child manners and little affectations
giving place to the most perfect earnestness, "papa, you must forgive me
for contradicting you, but you are indeed very much mistaken. I may have
been silly to go there. Erica did try all she could to persuade me to go
back to Greyshot yesterday; but I am glad I stayed even though you
are so angry about it. If there is a noble, brave girl on earth, it is
Erica! You don't know what she is to them all, and how they all love
her. I will tell you what this visit has done for me. It has made me
ashamed of myself, and I am going to try to be wiser, and less selfish."

It was something of an effort to Rose to say this, but she had been very
much struck with the sight of Erica's home life, and she wanted to prove
to her father how greatly he had misjudged her cousin. Unfortunately,
there are some people in this world who, having once got an idea into
their heads, will keep it in the teeth of the very clearest evidence to
the contrary.

In the meantime, Tom had rejoined Erica in the hall.