He looked at her unwillingly.  “Oh, don’t make a scene!” he said irritably.  “Your mother is nervous, so I have given it up for the present, that’s all.”

“Please don’t call Mrs. Ingleton my mother!” said Sylvia, suddenly deadly calm.  “Am I always to hunt alone, then, for the future?”

“You have got—­George,” smiled Mrs. Ingleton.

Sylvia’s eyes fell abruptly from her father’s face, but they did not return to her step-mother.  She turned away to the sideboard, and helped herself from a dish that stood there.  In absolute silence she sat down at the table and began to eat.

Her father sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment or two, then got up with a non-committal, “Well!” gathered up his letters, and tramped from the room.

Mrs. Ingleton took up the paper and perused it, humming.  Sylvia ate her breakfast in dead silence.

She rose finally to pour herself out some coffee, and at the movement her step-mother looked up.  There was a glitter in her hard grey eyes that somewhat belied the smile she sought to assume.  “Now, my dear,” she said, in the tone of one lecturing a refractory child, “you were a very wilful and impertinent girl last night.  I told you I should punish you, and I have kept my word.  I do not advise you to aggravate the offence by sulking.”

“Will you tell me what you mean?” said Sylvia, standing stiff and straight before her.

Mrs. Ingleton slightly shrugged her shoulders.  “You are behaving like a child of six, and really, if you go on, you will provoke me into treating you as such.  The attitude you have chosen to adopt is neither sensible nor dignified, let me tell you.  You resent my presence here.  Very well; but you cannot prevent it.  Would it not be much wiser of you either to submit to my authority or——­”

“Or?” repeated Sylvia icily.

“Or take the obvious course of providing yourself with a home elsewhere,” said Mrs. Ingleton.

Sylvia put up a quick hand to her throat.  She was breathing very quickly.  “You wish to force me to marry that horrible Preston man?” she said.

“By no means, my dear,” smiled Mrs. Ingleton.  “But you might do a good deal worse.  I tell you frankly, you will be very much underdog as long as you elect to remain in this establishment.  Oh yes!” She suddenly rose to her full majestic height, dwarfing the girl before her with conscious triumph.  “I may have some trouble with you, but conquer you I will.  Your father will not interfere between us.  You have seen that for yourself.  In fact, he has just told me that he leaves the management of you entirely to me.  He has given me an absolutely free hand—­very wisely.  If I choose to lock you in your room for the rest of the day he will not interfere.  And as I am quite capable of doing so, I warn you to be very careful.”

Sylvia stood as if turned to stone.  She was white to the lips, but she confronted her step-mother wholly without fear.