The girl looked up with a serene smile.  “Did they not then give you my message?” she inquired softly.  “I told them to say that I would breakfast here.”

The man’s eyes narrowed and darkened.  Something in his domineering spirit bristled, as it always bristled under questioning or opposition.

“Why?  You are fully dressed, are you not?”

“Assuredly.”

“Then what reason can you have for refusing to come when I ask it?  Is it simply that you wish to defy me?  I am not accustomed to being disobeyed.”

“Are you then so sure of obedience, mon cher?” She raised her gorgeous eyes and laughed up at him with indulgent amusement.  Her manner was that of a young empress who regards any criticism of herself as an audacious jest, so unprecedented as to be diverting.  “Are you sure that you have nothing yet to learn?  I said I should not come down to the breakfast-room—­because I did not wish to come.”

“You mean that you still refuse?”

“If you desire to call it that.  I would not seem ungracious....  I should prefer the word ‘decline.’”

“Then that is reason enough why you are coming.”

Mary lifted her brows in incredulous amusement, but Hamilton Burton did not smile in response.  He came a step nearer her chair and said very quietly:  “While you are in my house I wish you to appear at the breakfast-table.  This morning is a good time to begin.  Will you accompany me on your own feet, or will you make your initial appearance kicking those same feet, while I carry you down like a child in a tantrum?  There are about five seconds available for you to give the question mature deliberation.”

“Thank you, cheri.”  Her mirthful pupils were not flecked with annoyance.  “Five seconds are four seconds more than I need.  I shall not go either way.”

Hamilton made no further comment.  With the apparent ease of one taking up a child from its cradle, he bent down and gathered her slender figure in his arms, then, lifting her bodily from her chair, he turned toward the door.

For an instant, she lay against his shoulder, too astounded for protest.  Then her satin slippers began beating a furious tattoo and her small fists pummeling him as her cheeks flamed and her mismatched eyes burst into indignant fire.  These demonstrations her brother ignored as he carried her in effortless fashion out into the broad hall and half-way down the stairs.  She had ceased to struggle by that time and was gasping in wordless wrath.  But at the turn of the stairway into the lower hall he paused and stood still, while their eyes met and locked in a brief, hot duel of wills.

“Now,” he inquired calmly, “shall this be the manner of your first appearance before my secretary and butler, or will you make the rest of the journey on your own power?”

For the first time she recovered her voice.  It was a wild mingling of frustrated wrath and outraged dignity, and for once she found that her fluency had forsaken her.  She had been taught—­Hamilton had seen to that—­that when she spoke others should obey.  She had not yet learned to bow to even his autocracy.