r seat with gentle dignity. "I wish you had not
compelled me to speak, mother, and then I should not have offended
you: but as it is there is no help for it." And then she gathered up
her work and walked slowly out of the room.

Mrs. Drummond sat moodily in the empty room that had somehow never
seemed so empty before. Her attitude was as rigid and uncompromising
as usual; but there was a perplexed frown on her brow. For the first
time in her life one of her girls had dared to assert her own will and
to speak the truth to her; and she was utterly nonplussed. It was not
too much to say that she had received a blow. Her justice and sense of
fairness had been questioned,--her very maternal authority
impugned,--and that by one of her own children! Mattie, who was eight
years older, would not have ventured to cross her mother's will.
Grace had so dared; and she was bitterly angry with her. And yet she
had never so admired her before.

How honestly and bravely she had battled for her rights! her gray eyes
had shone with fire, her pale cheeks had glowed with the passion of
her words: for once in her life the girl had looked superbly
handsome.

"You have no faith in me; you treat me like a child." Well, she was
right; it was no child, it was a proud woman who was flinging those
hard words at her. For the first time Mrs. Drummond recognized the
possibility of a will as strong as her own. In spite of all her
authority, Grace had been a match for her mother: Mrs. Drummond knew
this, and it added fuel to her bitterness.

"I know my life will be harder for what I have said." Ah, Grace was
right there; it would be long before her mother would forgive her for
all those words, true as they were; and yet in her heart she had never
so feared and admired her daughter. Grace went up to her own room,
where Dottie was asleep in a little bed very near her sister's: it was
dark and somewhat cold, but the atmosphere was less frigid than the
parlor downstairs. Grace's frame was trembling with the force of her
emotion; her face was burning, and her hands cold. It was restful and
soothing to put down her aching head on the hard window-ledge and
close her eyes and think out the pain! It seemed hours before Isabel
came to summon her to supper, but she made an excuse that she was not
hungry, and refused to go downstairs.

"But you ate nothing at tea, and your head is aching!" persisted
Isabel, who was a bright, good-natured girl, and, in spite o