eople?'

'I will not argue with a child, insolent and disobedient as you are.
If I have anything to say about it, I will say it to your mother. It
should be enough for you that I, your father, tell you that you have
to live here. Now go away, and if you choose to be sullen, go and be
sullen where I shan't see you.' Georgiana looked round on her mother
and sister and then marched majestically out of the room. She still
meditated revenge, but she was partly cowed, and did not dare in her
father's presence to go on with her reproaches. She stalked off into
the room in which they generally lived, and there she stood panting
with anger, breathing indignation through her nostrils.

'And you mean to put up with it, mamma?' she said.

'What can we do, my dear?'

'I will do something. I'm not going to be cheated and swindled and
have my life thrown away into the bargain. I have always behaved well
to him. I have never run up bills without saying anything about them.'
This was a cut at her elder sister, who had once got into some little
trouble of that kind. 'I have never got myself talked about with
anybody. If there is anything to be done I always do it. I have
written his letters for him till I have been sick, and when you were
ill I never asked him to stay out with us after two or half-past two
at the latest. And now he tells me that I am to eat my meals up in my
bedroom because I remind him that he distinctly promised to take us
back to London! Did he not promise, mamma?'

'I understood so, my dear.'

'You know he promised, mamma. If I do anything now he must bear the
blame of it. I am not going to keep myself straight for the sake of
the family, and then be treated in that way.'

'You do that for your own sake, I suppose,' said her sister.

'It is more than you've been able to do for anybody's sake,' said
Georgiana, alluding to a very old affair to an ancient flirtation, in
the course of which the elder daughter had made a foolish and a futile
attempt to run away with an officer of dragoons whose private fortune
was very moderate. Ten years had passed since that, and the affair was
never alluded to except in moments of great bitterness.

'I've kept myself as straight as you have,' said Sophia. 'It's easy
enough to be straight, when a person never cares for anybody, and
nobody cares for a person.'

'My dears, if you quarrel what am I to do?' said their mother.

'It is I that have to suffer,' continued Georgiana.