At that moment something happened.  The man, William Evarts, who was talking with a vociferousness which seemed cutting and lacerating to the ear, who was brandishing an arm for emphasis in a circle of frenzy, fairly jumped to one side.  The girl, Ellen Brewster, in a light wrapper, which she had thrown over her night-gown, came with such a speed down the stairs which led to the entry directly before the door, that she seemed to be flying.  White ruffles eddied around her little feet, her golden hair was floating out like a flag.  She came close to William Evarts.  “Will you please not speak so loud,” said she, in a voice which her father had never heard from her lips before.  It was a voice of pure command, and of command which carried with it the consciousness of power to enforce.  She stood before William Evarts, and her fine smallness seemed intensified by her spirit to magnificence.  The man shrank back a little, he had the impression as of some one overtowering him, and yet the girl came scarcely to his shoulder.  “Please do not speak so loud, you will wake Amabel,” she said, and Evarts muttered, like a dog under a whip, that he didn’t want to wake her up.

“You must not,” said Ellen.  “Now here is the watch and chain.  I suppose that will do as well as your money if you cannot afford to wait for my father to pay you.  My father will pay you in time.  He has never borrowed anything of any man which he has not meant to pay back, and will not pay back.  If you cannot afford to wait, take the watch and chain.”

The man looked at her stupefied.

“Here,” said Ellen; “take it.”

“I don’t want your watch an’ chain,” muttered Evarts.

“You have either got to take them or wait for your money,” said Ellen.

“I’ll wait,” said Evarts.  He was looking at the girl’s face with mingled sentiments of pity, admiration, and terror.

“Very well, then,” said Ellen.  “I will promise you, and my father will, that you shall have your money in time, but how long do you want to wait?”

“I’ll wait any time.  I ain’t in any straits for the money, if I get it in the end,” said Evarts.

“You will get it in the end,” said Ellen.  Evarts turned to Andrew.

“Look here, give me your note for six months,” said he, “and we’ll call it all right.”

“All right,” said Andrew, again.

“If you are not satisfied with that,” said Ellen, with a tone as if she were conferring inestimable benefits, so proud it was, “you can take the watch and chain.  It is not hurt in the least.  Here.”  She was fairly insolent.  Evarts regarded her with a mixture of admiration and terror.  He told somebody the next day that Andrew Brewster had a stepper of a daughter, but he did not give his reasons for the statement.  He had a sense of honor, and he had been in love with a girl as young before he married his wife, who had been a widow older than he, worth ten thousand dollars from her first husband.  He could no more have taken the girl’s watch and chain than he would have killed her.