Hamilton Burton was spoken of as a woman-hater.  Society saw him rarely.  Power was his mistress and success his passion.  His egotism, centering on no deep love of his own and too fastidious for mere “affairs,” left him opportunity for an exaggerated family pride.

Now he halted with his fingers on the combination knob of the safe and straightened up.  The sun fell upon a face very attractive and winning, and a figure very strong and graceful, but at the same moment the features hardened and the eyes wore their fighting glint.

“Mary,” he said very slowly, “I thought that you understood.  I thought from the way you spoke in there that you realized it was you who had acted like a very lovely and a very selfish little pig.”

“Did you suppose then,” she queried as her chin went a shade higher and the long lashes dropped a little over the vivid eyes, “that I should make a scene before your servants?”

“If you include Mr. Bristoll in that category, I must ask you to correct your impression.  Carl is my closest friend.  A man who happens to stand on an eminence has few such friends and he values those he has.”

“Mr. Bristoll seemed to me”—­she shrugged her shoulders and spread her palms—­“what shall I say—­a nice boy?  Yet I should hardly have discussed in his presence such matters as we have now to discuss.  It seems, mon cher, that we do not yet quite understand each other.  Is it not so?”

She seated herself and glanced up at him with a half-challenge in her eyes, even though her lips smiled charmingly.

“Mary”—­the voice was now hard and the face was very fixed—­“there is very little to understand and I have very little time for discussion.  You have been abroad, enjoying every human advantage that money could buy you.  When you were a little kid washing dishes in the White Mountains you cried to be pretty.  If you had cried for the moon I’d have tried to get it for you.  If I’d failed it would have been my first failure.  The beauty I didn’t give you.  God had already done that, but everything that can enhance beauty, I did give you—­education, culture, social standing of the highest.  You have come back home with every exquisite accomplishment that a woman can have.  I’m willing to admit that from my point of view you’ve been a good investment.  You have instinctively the perfection that most women only strive after.  I’m so proud of you that I’ve chosen to make you the mistress of my house.  What you want you have only to ask for, but you will please remember that I am head of my family.  I shall make few demands—­and those must be complied with.  That is all there is to understand.”

“I had understood,” she answered very quietly, “that I was to regard this house as my own and that I was to be mistress here.  That, you pointed out in your letters, was why I should find it preferable to going to my mother’s.  Was it not so?”

“If you had gone to mother’s, would you have expected to upset the entire schedule of family affairs?” he demanded.