Chapter 31 - Page 2

Lady Mallowe's temper was as elemental as any Billingsgate could provide.

"You think you can take advantage of that!" she said. "Don't trust yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for me I will allow you to spoil everything?"

"How can I spoil everything?"

"By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here--refusing to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will appear that any one who takes me must take you also."

"There are servants outside," Joan warned her.

"You shall not stop me!" cried Lady Mallowe.

"You cannot stop yourself," said Joan. "That is the worst of it. It is bad enough when we stand and hiss at each other in a stage whisper; but when you lose control over yourself and raise your voice--"

"I came in here to tell you that this is your last chance. I shall never give you another. Do you know how old you are?"

"I shall soon be twenty-seven," Joan answered. "I wish I were a hundred. Then it would all be over."

"But it will not be over for years and years and years," her mother flung back at her. "Have you forgotten that the very rags you wear are not paid for?"

"No, I have not forgotten." The scene was working itself up on the old lines, as Joan had known it would. Her mother never failed to say the same things, every time such a scene took place.

"You will get no more such rags--paid or unpaid for. What do you expect to do? You don't know how to work, and if you did no decent woman would employ you. You are too good-looking and too bad- tempered."

Joan knew she was perfectly right. Knowing it, she remained silent, and her silence added to her mother's helpless rage. She moved a step nearer to her and flung the javelin which she always knew would strike deep.

"You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You are mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself."

She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan's voice as it answered her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.

"You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another thousand--though you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one."

Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.

"Who remembers the denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to remember the other thing. He is dead--dead! When a man's dead it's too late."

She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had ever chanced to drive it before. The truth--the awful truth she uttered shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her in heart-wrung fury.

"Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!" she cried. "They say even tigers care for their young! But you--you can say that to me. 'When a man's dead, it's too