me--while I drudged for you and endured your ill-temper and your abuse and
the contamination of association with you!... Give me that letter."

She possessed herself of it unopposed. But now Mama Thérèse found her
tongue.

"What--what do you mean?" she gasped, livid with fright. Was not a fortune
slipping through her avaricious fingers? "What are you going to do?"

"Do?" Sofia cried. "I don't know, more than this: I'm not going to
stay another hour under this roof, I'm going to leave to-night--now--
immediately! That's what I'm going to do!"

"Where are you going?"

The question halted Sofia in the doorway.

"To find my father--wherever he is!"

She left the two staring at each other, dumbfounded and aghast.

At the far end of the passage she flung open her bedchamber door, entered,
turned up the light, and snatched her cloak and hat from pegs beneath the
curtained shelf that held her scanty wardrobe.

Adjusting these before the mirror she could hear Thérèse bawling at Dupont
to follow and stop her. Sofia had little fear he would find heart to
attempt that, none the less she hurried. Once her hat was adjusted there
was nothing to detain her; the best she had she stood in; no sentimental
associations invested that room, the tomb of her defrauded childhood, the