fortunate prisoners on the roof, even as "the palm-laden dove to the
despairing Noah," and Will also asserted repeatedly that she was the
"Heroine of the Hour."

Miss Betty blushed to see her name so blazoned forth in print; but she
lacked one kind of vanity, and failed to find good reason for more than
a somewhat troubled laughter, the writer's purpose was so manifestly
kind in spite of the bizarre result.

"Oh, I wish Mr. Cummings hadn't!" she exclaimed. "It would have been
better not to speak of me at all, of course; but I can't see that there
is anything to resent--it is so funny!"

"Funny!" Mr. Carewe repeated the word in a cracked falsetto, with
the evident intention of mocking her, and at the same time hideously
contorted his face into a grotesque idiocy of expression, pursing
his lips so extremely, and setting his brows so awry, that his other
features were cartooned out of all familiar likeness, effecting an
alteration as shocking to behold, in a man of his severe cast of
countenance, as was his falsetto mimicry to hear. She rose in a kind of
terror, perceiving that this contortion was produced in burlesque of her
own expression, and, as he pressed nearer her, stepped back, overturning
her chair. She had little recollection of her father during her
childhood; and as long as she could remember, no one had spoken to her
angrily, or even roughly.

As she retreated from him, he leaned forward, thrusting the hideous mask
closer to her white and horror-stricken face.

"You can't see anything to resent in that!" he gibbered. "It's so funny,
is it? Funny! Funny! Funny! I'll show you whether it's funny or not,
I'll show you!" His voice rose almost to a shriek. "You hang around
fires, do you, on the public streets at night? You're a nice one for me
to leave in charge of my house while I'm away, you trollop! What did you
mean by going up on that roof? You knew that damned Vanrevel was there!
You did, I say, you knew it!"

She ran toward the door with a frightened cry; but he got between it and
her, menacing her with his upraised open hands, shaking them over her.

"You're a lovely daughter, aren't you!" he shouted hoarsely. "You knew
perfectly well who was on that roof, and you went! Didn't you go? Answer
me that! If I'd had arms about me when I got there, I'd have shot that
man dead! He was on my property, giving orders, the black hound! And
when I ordered him out, he told me if I interfered with his work before