“That was a Manly thing to do!  Oh, it was like a gentleman!  You wouldn’t come—­you wouldn’t even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say!  You were tired of what I had to say!  You’d heard it all a thousand times before, and you wouldn’t come!  No!  No!  No!” she stormed.  “You wouldn’t even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat!  And she told my husband!  You’re a man!”

Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to her feelings.  “Get out of this house!” she shrieked.  “This is my father’s house.  Don’t you dare speak to Robert like that!”

“No!  No!  I mustn’t speak—­”

“Don’t you dare!”

Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously, fronting each other, their furious faces close.  Their voices shrilled and rose and cracked—­they screeched.  They could be heard over the noise of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection.  They could be heard all over the house.  They were heard in the kitchen; they could have been heard in the cellar.  Neither of them cared for that.

“You told my husband!” screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to Edith’s.  “You told my husband!  This man put that in your hands to strike me with!  He did!”

“I’ll tell your husband again!  I’ll tell him everything I know!  It’s time your husband—­”

They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand.  “Do you want the neighbors in?” Sheridan thundered.

There fell a shocking silence.  Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done.  She moved slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run.  She ran into the hall, and through it, and out of the house.  Roscoe followed her heavily, his eyes on the ground.

“Now then!” said Sheridan to Lamhorn.

The words were indefinite, but the voice was not.  Neither was the vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan.  They fled lightly.

“Papa, papa!” wailed Mrs. Sheridan.  “Look at your hand!  You’d oughtn’t to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder.  Look!”

There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling.  “Now then!” he repeated.  “You goin’ to leave my house?”

“He will not!” sobbed Edith.  “Don’t you dare order him out!”

“Don’t you bother, dear,” said Lamhorn, quietly.  “He doesn’t understand.  You mustn’t be troubled.”  Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl’s distraught eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels—­the rabble being enacted by her father.