Mrs. Ingleton caught it, however.  She had the keen senses of a lynx.  “Now, Sylvia, my child, come here!” she commanded playfully.  “I can’t have you calling me that, you know.  If we are going to live together, we must have absolutely clear understanding between us on all points.  Don’t you agree with me, Gilbert?”

Ingleton growled something unintelligible, and made for the open window.

“Don’t go!” said his wife with a touch of peremptoriness.  “I want you here.  Tell this dear child that as I have determined to be a mother to her she is to address me as such!”

Ingleton barely paused.  “You must settle that between yourselves,” he said gruffly.  “And for heaven’s sake, don’t fight over it!”

He passed heavily forth, and Sylvia, after a very brief hesitation, sat down in a chair facing her step-mother.

“I am sorry,” she said quietly.  “But I can’t call you Mother.  Anything else you like to suggest, but not that.”

Mrs. Ingleton uttered an unpleasant laugh.  “I hope you are going to try and be sensible, my dear,” she said, “for I assure you high-flown sentiment does not appeal to me in the very least.  As head of your father’s house, I must insist upon being treated with due respect.  Let me warn you at the outset, though quite willing to befriend you, I am not a very patient woman.  I am not prepared to put up with any slights.”

Her voice lifted gradually as she proceeded till she ended upon a note that was almost shrill.

Sylvia sat very still.  Her hands were clasped tightly about her knee.  Her face was pale, and the red-brown eyes glittered a little, but she betrayed no other signs of emotion,

“I quite understand,” she said after a moment.  “But that doesn’t solve the present difficulty, does it?  I cannot possibly call you by a name that is sacred to someone else.”

She spoke very quietly, but there was indomitable resolution in her very calm—­a resolution that exasperated Mrs. Ingleton almost beyond endurance.

She arose with a sweeping gesture.  “Oh, very well then,” she said.  “You shall call me Madam!”

Sylvia looked up at her.  “I think that is quite a good idea,” she said in a tone that somehow stung her hearer, unbearably.  “I will do that.”

“And don’t be impertinent!” she said, beginning to pace to and fro like an angry tigress.  “I will not put up with it, Sylvia.  I warn you.  You have been thoroughly spoilt all your life.  I know the signs quite well.  And you have come to think that you can do anything you like.  But that is not so any longer.  I am mistress here, and I mean to maintain my position.  Any hint of rebellion from you or anyone else I shall punish with the utmost severity.  So now you understand.”

“I do indeed,” said Sylvia.

She had not stirred from her chair, but sat watching her step-mother’s agitated pacing with grim attention.  It was her first acquaintance with the most violent temper she had ever encountered in a woman, and it interested her.  She was no longer conscious of being angry herself.  The whole affair had become a sort of bitter comedy.  She looked upon it with a species of impersonal scorn.