“Oh, you did, did you?” said the girl, scarcely less insolently than she had spoken to Mrs. Mandel.  “I should like to know what you did it for?  I’d like to know what made you think I wasn’t able to take care of myself.  I just knew somebody had been meddling, but I didn’t suppose it was you.  I can manage my own affairs in my own way, if you please, and I’ll thank you after this to leave me to myself in what don’t concern you.”

“Don’t concern me?  You impudent jade!” her father began.

Christine advanced from the doorway toward the table; she had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled from them.  She said, “Will you go to him and tell him that this meddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, and you take it all back?”

“No!” shouted the old man.  “And if—­”

“That’s all I want of you!” the girl shouted in her turn.  “Here are your presents.”  With both hands she flung the jewels-pins and rings and earrings and bracelets—­among the breakfast-dishes, from which some of them sprang to the floor.  She stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring from the finger where Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed that at her father’s plate.  Then she whirled out of the room, and they heard her running up-stairs.

The old man made a start toward her, but he fell back in his chair before she was gone, and, with a fierce, grinding movement of his jaws, controlled himself.  “Take-take those things up,” he gasped to Mrs. Mandel.  He seemed unable to rise again from his chair; but when she asked him if he were unwell, he said no, with an air of offence, and got quickly to his feet.  He mechanically picked up the intaglio ring from the table while he stood there, and put it on his little finger; his hand was not much bigger than Christine’s.  “How do you suppose she found it out?” he asked, after a moment.

“She seems to have merely suspected it,” said Mrs. Mandel, in a tremor, and with the fright in her eyes which Christine’s violence had brought there.

“Well, it don’t make any difference.  She had to know, somehow, and now she knows.”  He started toward the door of the library, as if to go into the hall, where his hat and coat hung.

“Mr. Dryfoos,” palpitated Mrs. Mandel, “I can’t remain here, after the language your daughter has used to me—­I can’t let you leave me—­I—­I’m afraid of her—­”

“Lock yourself up, then,” said the old man, rudely.  He added, from the hall before he went out, “I reckon she’ll quiet down now.”

He took the Elevated road.  The strike seemed a vary far-off thing, though the paper he bought to look up the stockmarket was full of noisy typography about yesterday’s troubles on the surface lines.  Among the millions in Wall Street there was some joking and some swearing, but not much thinking, about the six thousand men who had taken such chances in their attempt to better their condition.  Dryfoos heard