This time she had found the right note:  she knew it by the tightening of her father’s slack muscles and the sudden straightening of his back.

“By George, he pretty near does!” he exclaimed bringing down his fist on the desk.  “They haven’t been taking it out of you about that, have they?” “They don’t fight fair enough to say so.  They just egg him on to turn against me.  They only consented to his marrying me because they thought you were so crazy about the match you’d give us everything, and he’d have nothing to do but sit at home and write books.”

Mr. Spragg emitted a derisive groan.  “From what I hear of the amount of business he’s doing I guess he could keep the Poet’s Corner going right along.  I suppose the old man was right—­he hasn’t got it in him to make money.”

“Of course not; he wasn’t brought up to it, and in his heart of hearts he’s ashamed of having to do it.  He told me it was killing a little more of him every day.”

“Do they back him up in that kind of talk?”

“They back him up in everything.  Their ideas are all different from ours.  They look down on us—­can’t you see that?  Can’t you guess how they treat me from the way they’ve acted to you and mother?”

He met this with a puzzled stare.  “The way they’ve acted to me and mother?  Why, we never so much as set eyes on them.”

“That’s just what I mean!  I don’t believe they’ve even called on mother this year, have they?  Last year they just left their cards without asking.  And why do you suppose they never invite you to dine?  In their set lots of people older than you and mother dine every night of the winter—­society’s full of them.  The Marvells are ashamed to have you meet their friends:  that’s the reason.  They’re ashamed to have it known that Ralph married an Apex girl, and that you and mother haven’t always had your own servants and carriages; and Ralph’s ashamed of it too, now he’s got over being crazy about me.  If he was free I believe he’d turn round to-morrow and marry that Ray girl his mother’s saving up for him.”

Mr. Spragg listened with a heavy brow and pushed-out lip.  His daughter’s outburst seemed at last to have roused him to a faint resentment.  After she had ceased to speak he remained silent, twisting an inky penhandle between his fingers; then he said:  “I guess mother and I can worry along without having Ralph’s relatives drop in; but I’d like to make it clear to them that if you came from Apex your income came from there too.  I presume they’d be sorry if Ralph was left to support you on his.”

She saw that she had scored in the first part of the argument, but every watchful nerve reminded her that the hardest stage was still ahead.

“Oh, they’re willing enough he should take your money—­that’s only natural, they think.”

A chuckle sounded deep down under Mr. Spragg’s loose collar.  “There seems to be practical unanimity on that point,” he observed.  “But I don’t see,” he continued, jerking round his bushy brows on her, “how going to Europe is going to help you out.”