“What difference does that make?” she demanded shortly.

“A funny thing for a father to do with his own child,” Larry returned.  “But whether Jimmie intended it or not, that’s just what he’s done.”

“What I am, I am,” she retorted with her imperious defiance.  Just then she felt that she hated him; she quivered with a desire to hurt him:  he had so utterly destroyed her romantic hero and her romantic dreams.  Her hands clenched.

“You talk about going straight—­it’s all rot!” she flamed at him.  “A lot of men say they’re going straight, but no one ever does!  And you won’t either!”

“You think I won’t?”

“I know you won’t!  You don’t know how to do any regular work.  And, besides, no one will give a crook a chance.”

She had unerringly placed her finger upon his two great problems, and Larry knew it; he had considered them often enough.

“All the same, I’m going to make good!” he declared.

“Oh, no, you’re not!”

Perhaps he was stirred chiefly by the sting of her taunting tongue, by the blaze of her dark, disdainful eyes; and perhaps by the changed feeling toward this creature whom he had left a half-grown girl and returned to find a woman.  At any rate, he crossed and seized her wrists and gazed fiercely down upon her.

“I tell you, I’m going to go straight, and I’m going to make a success of it!  You’ll see!” And then he added dominantly:  “What’s more, I’m going to make you go straight, too!”

She made no attempt to free herself, but blazed up at him defiantly.  “You’ll make me do nothing.  I’m going to be just what I said, and I’m going to make a success of it.  Just wait—­I’ll prove to you what I can do!  And you—­you’ll be a failure, and will come slinking back and beg us to take you in!”

They glared at each other silently, angrily, their aroused wills defying each other.  For a moment they stood so.  Then something—­a mixture of his desire to dominate this defiant young thing and of that growing change in him toward her—­surged madly into Larry’s head.  He caught Maggie in his arms and kissed her.

All the rigidity went suddenly from her figure and she hung loose in his embrace.  Their gazes held for a moment.  She went pale, and quivering all through she looked up at him in startled, wide-eyed silence.  As for Larry, a dizzying, throbbing emotion permeated his whole astonished being.

Suddenly she pushed herself free from his relaxing arms, and backed away from him.

“What did you do that for?” she whispered huskily.

But she did not wait for his answer.  She turned and hurried for the stairway.  Three steps up she turned again and gazed down upon him.  Her cheeks were once more flushed and her dark eyes blazing.

“It’s going to be just as I said!” she flung at him.  “I’m going to succeed—­you’re going to fail!  You just wait and see!”

She turned and ran swiftly up the stairway and out of sight.  Neither of them had been aware that the Duchess, a drab figure merged into a drab background, had regarded them fixedly during all this scene.  And Larry was still unconscious that the old eyes were now watching him with their deep-set, expressionless fixity.