eyes shot a gleam of something that was so hateful to Rose Mary that
she caught her breath with horror, and only the sharp corner of her
letter pressed into her naked breast kept her from reeling. But in a
second she had herself in hand and her quick mother-wit was aroused to
find out the worst and begin a fight for the safeguarding of her
nesties--and the nest.

"And if I shouldn't want to--to do what you want me to?" she asked,
and she was even able to summon a smile with a tinge of coquetry that
served to draw the wily Senator further than he realized.

"Oh, I feel sure you can have no objections to me that are strong
enough to weigh against thus providing suitably for your old
relatives," was the bait he dangled before her humiliated eyes. "It is
the only way to do it, for Mr. Alloway is too old to care any longer
for the place, which has been run at a loss for too long already. We
may say that in accepting me you are accepting their comfortable
future. Of course you could not expect things to go on any longer in
this impossible way, as I have need of the home and family I am really
entitled to, now could you?" The Senator bent forward and finished his
sentence in his most beguiling tone as he poured the hateful glance
all over her again so that her blood stopped in her veins from very
fear and repulsion.

"No," she said slowly, with her eyes down on the bowl of butter on
the table before her; "no, things couldn't go on as they have any
longer. I have felt that for some time." She paused a second, then
lifted her deep eyes and looked straight into his, and the wounded
light in their blue depth was shadowed in the pride of the glance.
"You are right--you must not be kept out of your own any longer. But