cause I refuse to be dictated
to by an impertinent girl? Mad because I insist upon being
mistress in my own house? You--you little viper--how dare you
stand there defying me? Do you want to be turned out into the
street?"

She had worked herself up into unreasoning rage again. Sylvia saw
that further argument would be worse than useless. Very quietly,
without another word, she turned, gathered up riding-whip and
gloves, and went from the room. She heard Mrs. Ingleton utter a
fierce, malignant laugh as she went.

CHAPTER IV

THE VICTOR

The commencement of the fox-hunting season was always celebrated by
a dance at the Town Hall--a dance which Sylvia had never failed to
attend during the five years that she had been in society and had
been a member of the Hunt.

It was at her first Hunt Ball, on the occasion of her _debut_, that
she had met young Guy Ranger, and she looked back to that ball with
all its tender reminiscences as the beginning of all things.

How superlatively happy she had been that night! Not for anything
that life could offer would she have parted with that one precious
romance of her girlhood. She clung to the memory of it as to a
priceless possession. And year after year she had gone to the Hunt
Ball with that memory close in her heart.

It was at the last of these that George Preston had asked her to be
his wife. She had made every effort to avoid him, but he had
mercilessly tracked her down; and though she had refused him with
great emphasis she had never really felt that he had taken her
seriously. He was always seeking her out, always making excuses to
be alone with her. It was growing increasingly difficult to evade
him. She had never liked the man, but Fate or his own contrivance
was continually throwing him in her way. If she hunted, he
invariably rode home with her. If she remained away, he invariably
came upon her somehow, and wanted to know wherefore.

She strongly suspected that her step-mother was in league with him,
though she had no direct proof of this. Preston was being
constantly asked to the house, and whenever they went out to dine
they almost invariably met him. She had begun to have a feeling
that people eyed them covertly, with significant glances, that they
were thrown together by design. Wherever they met, he always fell
to her lot as dinner-partner, and he had begun to affect an
attitude of proprietorship towards her which was yet too indefini