Mrs. Gower flushed, paled a little, and reddened again.  She glared—­no other word describes her expression—­at her husband for an instant.  Then she took refuge behind her dignity.

“There is a downright streak of vulgarity in you, Horace,” she said, “which I am sorry to see crop out in my children.”

“Thank you, mamma,” Betty remarked evenly.

Mrs. Gower whirled on Norman.

“I wash my hands of you completely,” she said imperiously.  “I am ashamed of you.”

“I’d rather you’d be ashamed of me,” Norman retorted, “than that I should be ashamed of myself.”

“And you, sir,”—­he faced his father, speaking in a tone of formal respect which did not conceal a palpable undercurrent of defiance—­“you also, I suppose, wash your hands of me?”

Gower looked at him for a second.  His face was a mask, devoid of expression.

“You’re a man grown,” he said.  “Your mother has expressed herself as she might be expected to.  I say nothing.”

Norman walked to the door.

“I don’t care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don’t say, nor even what you think,” he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the knob.  “I have my own row to hoe.  I’m going to hoe it my own style.  And that’s all there is to it.  If you can’t even wish me luck, why, you can go to the devil!”

“Norman!” His mother lifted her voice in protesting horror.  Gower himself only smiled, a bit cynically.  And Betty looked at the door which closed upon her brother with a wistful sort of astonishment.

Gower first found occasion for speech.

“While we are on the subject of intimate family affairs, Bessie,” he addressed his wife casually, “I may as well say that I shall have to call on you for some funds—­about thirty thousand dollars.  Forty thousand would be better.”

Mrs. Gower stiffened to attention.  She regarded her husband with an air of complete disapproval, slightly tinctured with surprise.

“Oh,” she said, “really?”

“I shall need that much properly to undertake this season’s operations,” he stated calmly, almost indifferently.

“Really?” she repeated.  “Are you in difficulties again?”

“Again?” he echoed.  “It is fifteen years since I was in a corner where I needed any of your money.”

“It seems quite recent to me,” Mrs. Gower observed stiffly.

“Am I to understand from that that you don’t care to advance me whatever sum I require?” he asked gently.

“I don’t see why I should,” Mrs. Gower replied after a second’s reflection, “even if I were quite able to do so.  This place costs something to keep up.  I can’t very well manage on less than two thousand a month.  And Betty and I must be clothed.  You haven’t contributed much recently, Horace.”

“No?  I had the impression that I had been contributing pretty freely for thirty years,” Gower returned dryly.  “I paid the bills up to December.  Last season wasn’t a particularly good one—­for me.”