Manslaughter

								

was, for she was old-fashioned and believed that children ought to obey.
But this night he had alienated her sympathy by being rude to her--for
the first and last time. He had come home after one of his long absences
to the hideous house in Fifth Avenue in which he took so much pride, and
had found these two new pets of Lydia's careening about the hall like
young calves. He had turned on Miss Bennett.
"What the hell do you let her do such things for?" he had demanded, and
Miss Bennett had answered with unusual spirit.
"Because she's so badly brought up, Mr. Thorne, that no one can do
anything with her."
Lydia had stood by defiantly, glancing from one to the other, with a
hand in the collar of each of her dogs, her face pale, her jaw set, her
head not much above the sleek battleship-gray heads of the great Danes,
her small body pulled first one way and then the other by their gambols.
All the time she was saying over and over, "I will keep them! I will! I
will!"
She hadn't kept them; she had lost that particular skirmish in the long
war. Not till some years later did she begin to win; but whether she
lost or won, Miss Bennett was always conscious of a rush of pity for the
slim, black-eyed little girl thrusting her iron will so fearlessly
against that of the man from whom she had inherited it.
And for the Lydia of to-day, now engaged in thrusting her will against
the will of the world, Miss Bennett felt the same unreasoning pity--pity
which rendered her weak in her own defense when any dispute arose
between them. She and Lydia had been having a scene now; only a little
scene--hardly more than a discussion.
Morson saw it clearly when he came in after luncheon to get the coffee
cups, although a complete and decorous silence greeted his entrance. He
saw it in the way in which his young employer was standing, as erect as
an Indian, looking slantingly down her cheek at her companion. Miss
Bennett was sitting on the sofa with her feet in their high-heeled satin
slippers crossed, and she was slipping the rings nervously up and down
her fine, thin fingers.
She was a small, well-made woman, to whom prettiness had come with her
gray hair. The perfection of all her appointments, which might once have
been interpreted as the vanity of youth, turned out to be a settled
nicety that stood her in good stead in middle life and differentiated
her at fifty-five--a neat, elegant little figure among her
contemporaries.
The knowledge that he was interrupting a discussion did not hurry Morson
any more than the faintest curiosity delayed him. He brushed up the
hearth, turned a displaced chair, collected the cups on his tray and
left the room at exactly the same pace at which he had entered it. He
had known many scenes in his day.
As soon as the door closed behind him Miss Bennett said: "Of course, if
you meant you don't want me to ask my friends to your house you are