Peters.

Years of indigestion had made Mr. Peters' temper, even when in a
normal mood, perfectly impossible; in a crisis like this it ran
amuck. He vented it on Aline because he had always vented his
irritabilities on Aline; because the fact of her sweet, gentle
disposition, combined with the fact of their relationship, made
her the ideal person to receive the overflow of his black moods.
While his wife had lived he had bullied her. On her death Aline
had stepped into the vacant position.

Aline did not cry, because she was not a girl who was given to
tears; but, for all her placid good temper, she was wounded. She
was a girl who liked everything in the world to run smoothly and
easily, and these scenes with her father always depressed her.
She took advantage of a lull in Mr. Peters' flow of words and
slipped from the room.

Her cheerfulness had received a shock. She wanted sympathy. She
wanted comforting. For a moment she considered George Emerson in
the role of comforter; but there were objections to George in
this character. Aline was accustomed to tease and chat with
George, but at heart she was a little afraid of him; and instinct
told her that, as comforter, he would be too volcanic and
supermanly for a girl who was engaged to marry another man in
June. George, as comforter, would be far too prone to trust to
action rather than to the soothing power of the spoken word.
George's idea of healing the wound, she felt, would be to push
her into a cab and drive to the nearest registrar's.