That one man, through mere persistent steadiness in evil temper and domestic tyranny, should have so broken the creatures of his household into abject submission and hopelessness, seemed too incredible.  Such a power appeared as remote from civilised existence in London and New York as did that which had inflicted tortures in the dungeons of castles of old.  Prisoners in such dungeons could utter no cry which could reach the outside world; the prisoners at Stornham Court, not four hours from Hyde Park Corner, could utter none the world could hear, or comprehend if it heard it.  Sheer lack of power to resist bound them hand and foot.  And she, Betty Vanderpoel, was here upon the spot, and, as far as she could understand, was being implored to take no steps, to do nothing.  The atmosphere in which she had spent her life, the world she had been born into, had not made for fearfulness that one would be at any time defenceless against circumstances and be obliged to submit to outrage.  To be a Vanderpoel was, it was true, to be a shining mark for envy as for admiration, but the fact removed obstacles as a rule, and to find one’s self standing before a situation with one’s hands, figuratively speaking, tied, was new enough to arouse unusual sensations.  She recalled, with an ironic sense of bewilderment, as a sort of material evidence of her own reality, the fact that not a week ago she had stepped on to English soil from the gangway of a solid Atlantic liner.  It aided her to resist the feeling that she had been swept back into the Middle Ages.

“When he is angry,” was one of the first questions she put to Ughtred, “what does he give as his reason?  He must profess to have a reason.”

“When he gets in a rage he says it is because mother is silly and common, and I am badly brought up.  But we always know he wants money, and it makes him furious.  He could kill us with rage.”

“Oh!” said Betty.  “I see.”

“It began that time when he struck her.  He said then that it was not decent that a woman who was married should keep her own money.  He made her give him almost everything she had, but she wants to keep some for me.  He tries to make her get more from grandfather, but she will not write begging letters, and she won’t give him what she is saving for me.”

It was a simple and sordid enough explanation in one sense, and it was one of which Bettina had known, not one parallel, but several.  Having married to ensure himself power over unquestioned resources, the man had felt himself disgustingly taken in, and avenged himself accordingly.  In him had been born the makings of a domestic tyrant who, even had he been favoured by fortune, would have wreaked his humours upon the defenceless things made his property by ties of blood and marriage, and who, being unfavoured, would do worse.  Betty could see what the years had held for Rosy, and how her weakness and timidity had been considered as positive assets.  A woman who will cry when she is bullied, may be counted upon to submit after she has cried.  Rosy had submitted up to a certain point and then, with the stubbornness of a weak creature, had stood at timid bay for her young.