would better
marry soon or he would take drastic steps to release himself of the
burden. When he attacked her before her mother, there was a violent
quarrel from which Mildred fled to hide in her room or in the remotest
part of the garden. When he hunted her out to insult her alone, she
sat or stood with eyes down and face ghastly pale, mute, quivering. She
did not interrupt, did not try to escape. She was like the chained and
spiritless dog that crouches and takes the shower of blows from its
cruel master.

Where could she go? Nowhere. What could she do? Nothing. In the
days of prosperity she had regarded herself as proud and high spirited.
She now wondered at herself! What had become of the pride? What of the
spirit? She avoided looking at her image in the glass--that thin,
pallid face, those circled eyes, the drawn, sick expression about the
mouth and nose. "I'm stunned," she said to herself. "I've been stunned
ever since father's death. I've never recovered--nor has mother." And
she gave way to tears--for her father, she fancied; in fact, from shame
at her weakness and helplessness. She thought--hoped--that she would
not be thus feeble and cowardly, if she were not living at home, in the
house she loved, the house where she had spent her whole life. And
such a house! Comfort and luxury and taste; every room, every corner
of the grounds, full of the tenderest and most beautiful associations.
Also, there was her position in Hanging Rock. Everywhere else she
would be a stranger and would have either no position at all or one
worse than that of the utter outsider. There, she was of the few
looked up to by the whole community. No one knew, or even suspected,
how she was degraded by her step-father. Before the world he was
courteous and considerate toward her as toward everybody. Indeed,
Presbury's natural instincts were gentle and kindly. His hatred of
Mildred and his passion for humiliating her were the result of his
conviction that he had been tricked into the marriage and his inability
to gratify his resentment upon his wife. He could not make the mother
suffer; but he could make the daughter suffer--and he did. Besides,
she was of no use to him and would presently be an expense.

"Your money will soon be gone," he said to her. "If you paid your just
share of the expenses it would be gone now. When it is gone, what will
you do?"

She was silent.

"Your mother has written to your brother ab