on her account, so she said eagerly:

"Please, uncle, do me the favor of letting the whole matter drop. Mr.
Haldane has seen his mistake by this time. I am going home to-morrow,
and the affair is too absurd to make any one any more trouble."

Before he could answer, Mrs. Arnot, hearing their voices, and surmising
the trouble which she had hoped to prevent, now appeared also, and by
her good sense and tact brought the disagreeable scene to a speedy
close.

"Laura, my dear," she said quietly, "go up to my room, and I will join
you there soon." The young girl gladly obeyed.

There were times when Mrs. Arnot controlled her strong-willed husband in
a manner that seemed scarcely to be reconciled with his dictatorial
habits. This fact might be explained in part by her wealth, of which he
had the use, but which she still controlled, but more truly by her
innate superiority, which ever gives supremacy to the nobler and
stronger mind when aroused.

Mr. Arnot had become suddenly and vindictively angry with his clerk,
who, instead of being overwhelmed with awe and shame at his unexpected
appearance, was haughty and even defiant. One of the strongest impulses
of this man was to crush out of those in his employ a spirit of
independence and individual self-assertion. The idea of a part of his
business machinery making such a jarring tumult in his own house! He
proposed to instantly cast away the cause of friction, and insert a more
stolid human cog-wheel in Haldane's place.