A look that could come only from a devil temper flashed into Margaret’s hazel eyes.  “Tell her I’m out.”

“She saw you from the window.”

Margaret debated.  Said Lucia, “When she comes so soon after lunch she’s always in a frightful mood.  She comes then to make a row because, without her after-lunch nap, she’s hardly human and can be more—­more fiendish.”

“I’ll not see her,” declared Margaret.

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Lucia.  “Grandmother always has her way.”

Margaret turned to the maid.  “Tell her I had just gone to my room with a raging headache.”

The maid departed.  Margaret made a detour, entered the house by the kitchen door and went up to her room.  She wrenched off blouse and skirt, got into a dressing sacque and let down her thick black hair.  The headache was now real, so upsetting to digestion had been the advent of Madam Bowker, obviously on mischief bent.  “She transforms me into a raging devil,” thought Margaret, staring at her fiercely sullen countenance in the mirror of the dressing table.  “I wish I’d gone in to see her.  I’m in just the right humor.”

The door opened and Margaret whisked round to blast the intruder who had dared adventure her privacy without knocking.  There stood her grandmother—­ebon staff in gloved hand—­erect, spare body in rustling silk—­gray-white hair massed before a sort of turban—­ steel-blue eyes flashing, delicate nostrils dilating with the breath of battle.

“Ah—­Margaret!” said she, and her sharp, quarrel-seeking voice tortured the girl’s nerves like the point of a lancet.  “They tell me you have a headache.”  She lifted her lorgnon and scrutinized the pale, angry face of her granddaughter.  “I see they were telling me the truth.  You are haggard and drawn and distressingly yellow.”

The old lady dropped her lorgnon, seated herself.  She held her staff out at an angle, as if she were Majesty enthroned to pass judgment of life and death.  “You took too much champagne at those vulgar Burkes last night,” she proceeded.  “It’s a vicious thing for a girl to do—­vicious in every way.  It gives her a reputation, for moral laxity which an unmarried woman can ill-afford to have—­ unless she has the wealth that makes men indifferent to character. ...  Why don’t you answer?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders.  “You know I detest champagne and never drink it,” said she.  “And I don’t purpose to begin, even to oblige you.”

“To oblige me!”

“To give you pretext for contention and nagging and quarreling.”

Madam Bowker was now in the element she had been seeking—­the stormy sea of domestic wrangling.  She struck out boldly, with angry joy.  “I’ve long since learned not to expect gratitude from you.  I can’t understand my own weakness, my folly, in continuing to labor with you.”

“That’s very simple,” said Margaret.  “I’m the one human being you can’t compel by hook or crook to bow to your will.  You regard me as unfinished business.”