masterfully, and he had often resented the fact that his daughter, by
the nature of things, was to a great extent outside his immediate rule.

During office hours business took him away from her. The sun never set
on his empire over Bailey, but it needed a definite crisis like the
present one to enable him to jerk at the reins which guided Ruth, and
he was glad of the chance to make his power felt.

The fact that this affair brought him into immediate contact with Mrs.
Porter added to his enjoyment. Of all the people, men or women, with
whom his business or social life had brought him into conflict, she
alone had fought him squarely and retired with the honours of war. When
his patriarchal mind had led him to bully his late wife, it was Mrs.
Porter who had fought her cause. It was Mrs. Porter who openly
expressed her contempt for his money and certain methods of making it.
She was the only person in his immediate sphere over whom he had no
financial hold.

He was a man who liked to be surrounded by dependents, and Mrs. Porter
stoutly declined to be a dependent. She moved about the world, blunt
and self-sufficing, and he hated her as he hated no one else. The
thought that she had now come to grips with him and that he could best
her in open fight was pleasant to him. All his life, except in his
conflicts with her, he had won. He meant to win now.

Bailey's apprehensions amused him. He had a thorough contempt for all
actors, authors, musicians, and artists, whom he classed together in
one group as men who did not count, save in so far as they gave mild
entertainment to the men who, like himself, did count. The idea of
anybody taking them seriously seemed too fantastic to be considered.