your impression. Carl is my closest friend. A man who happens to stand
on an eminence has few such friends and he values those he has."

"Mr. Bristoll seemed to me"--she shrugged her shoulders and spread her
palms--"what shall I say--a nice boy? Yet I should hardly have discussed
in his presence such matters as we have now to discuss. It seems, _mon
cher_, that we do not yet quite understand each other. Is it not so?"

She seated herself and glanced up at him with a half-challenge in her
eyes, even though her lips smiled charmingly.

"Mary"--the voice was now hard and the face was very fixed--"there is
very little to understand and I have very little time for discussion.
You have been abroad, enjoying every human advantage that money could
buy you. When you were a little kid washing dishes in the White
Mountains you cried to be pretty. If you had cried for the moon I'd have
tried to get it for you. If I'd failed it would have been my first
failure. The beauty I didn't give you. God had already done that, but
everything that can enhance beauty, I did give you--education, culture,
social standing of the highest. You have come back home with every
exquisite accomplishment that a woman can have. I'm willing to admit
that from my point of view you've been a good investment. You have
instinctively the perfection that most women only strive after. I'm so
proud of you that I've chosen to make you the mistress of my house. What
you want you have only to ask for, but you will please remember that I
am head of my family. I shall make few demands--and those must be
complied with. That is all there is to understand."

"I had understood," she answered very quietly, "that I was to regard
this house as my own and that I was to be mistress here. That, you