Manslaughter

								

neither her physical well-being nor public opinion. An older person,
however violent, has learned that he must consider such questions, and
it is a weakness in a campaign of violence to consider anything but the
desired end.
And on the whole Thorne lost. He could make Lydia do or refrain from
doing specific acts--at least he could when he was at home. He had not
permitted her at ten to keep her great Danes nor at thirteen to drive a
high-stepping hackney in a red-wheeled cart which she ordered for
herself without consultation with anyone.
The evening after that struggle was over he had asked Miss Bennett to
marry him. She knew why he did it. Lydia in the course of the row had
referred to her as a paid companion. He had long been considering it as
a sensible arrangement, particularly in case of his death. Miss Bennett
refused him. She tried to think that she had been tempted by his offer,
but she was not. To her he seemed a violent man who had been a
bricklayer, and she always breathed a sigh of relief when he was out of
the house. She was glad that he did not press the point, but in after
years it was a solid comfort to her to remember that she might have been
Lydia's stepmother if she had chosen.
But it was in the long-drawn-out contest that Thorne failed. He could
not make Lydia keep governesses that she didn't like. Her method was
simple--she made their lives so disagreeable that nothing could make
them stay. He never succeeded in getting her to boarding school, though
he and Miss Bennett, after a long conference, decided that that was the
thing to do. But that failure was partly due to his failing health.
That was their last great struggle. He died in 1912. In his will he left
Miss Bennett ten thousand a year, with the request that she stay with
his daughter until her marriage. It touched Miss Bennett that he should
have seen that she could not have stayed if she had been dependent on
Lydia's capricious will. It was this that made her position
possible--the fact that they both knew she could go in an instant if
she wanted; not that she ever doubted that Lydia was sincerely attached
to her.

CHAPTER III

When Lydia ran upstairs to dress everything was waiting for her--the
lights lit, the fires crackling, her bath drawn, her underclothes and
stockings folded on a chair, her green-and-gold dress spread out upon
the bed, her narrow gold slippers standing exactly parallel on the floor
beside it, and in the midst Evans, like a priestess waiting to serve the
altar of a goddess, was standing with her eyes on the clock.
Lydia snatched off her hat, rumpled her hair with both hands as Evans
began to undo her blouse. She unfastened the cuff, and then looked up
with pale startled eyes.
"Your bracelet, miss?"
"Bracelet?" For a second Lydia had really forgotten it.