Mama Therese did not respond, she offered no objection when Dupont took up the sheet of paper that lay between them, but ground the heels of her hands into her fat cheeks and sat glowering vindictively while he read aloud, slowly, with the labour of one to whom reading is unaccustomed dissipation: 

DEAR MADAM: 

Herewith we beg to enclose our cheque to your order in the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, being the quarterly payment in advance due you from the estate of our deceased client, the Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, for your care of her daughter.  We further beg to advise that, pursuant to the provisions of her will, we begin to-day, on the eighteenth birthday of the young Princess Sofia, a search for her father with the object of apprising him of his daughter’s existence.  Therefore we would request you to make arrangements to have the young Princess Sofia brought to England forthwith from the convent in France where we understand she is finishing her education.  We take leave, however, to advise that, pending the outcome of our enquiries, the question of her father’s existence be not discussed with the young princess.  In event of his death being established or of failure to find him within six months, the Princess Sofia is to enter without more delay or formality into possession of her mother’s estate.

Papa Dupont put down the letter.  “It is plain enough,” he expounded:  “if this father is found, we can whistle for our money; whereas if I were married to Sofia, as her husband I would control—­”

He broke off sharply, and added in consternation:  “One million thunders!”

Sofia stood between them.

And yet she wasn’t the Sofia they knew, but another person altogether, a transfigured and exalted Sofia, aflame with righteous wrath and contemptuous with the pride of birth which had leaped into full being a moment since.

A princess, born the daughter of a princess, now she knew and looked it.

All thought of fear or deference was gone, she had nothing left but scorn for these two despicable creatures, the fat harpy and her crapulent consort who had battened so long upon her misery, who had held her in bondage to the most menial tasks of their wretched restaurant while they filched and hoarded the money paid them for giving her the care and the advantages that were her due.

And something of this new-found dignity, to which her title was so unquestionable, which set her upon a level from which she could not but look down on these two paltry frauds, so abashed the Frenchwoman that the phrases of invective and vilification which gushed instinctively from the foul springs of her temper stuck in her throat, she couldn’t utter them, and she well-nigh choked with impotent fury and fear as the girl spoke.

“You swindlers!” Sofia said, deliberately.  “You poor cheats!  To pocket a thousand pounds a year of my mother’s money—­and make me slave for you in your wretched cafe!  And for eighteen years!  For eighteen years you have been robbing me of every right I had in the world, robbing me of everything I’ve needed and longed and prayed for, everything you were paid to give me—­while I drudged for you and endured your ill-temper and your abuse and the contamination of association with you!...  Give me that letter.”