She was her mother's daughter; and she had a spark of her mother's spirit.

Her life depended on the issue of that interview.

It was useless--without father or brother to take her part--to lose the last chance of appealing to him.

She dashed away the tears--time enough to cry, is time easily found in a woman's existence--she dashed away the tears, and spoke to him again, more gently than she had spoken yet.
"You have been three weeks, Geoffrey, at your brother Julius's place, not ten miles from here; and you have never once ridden over to see me.
You would not have come to-day, if I had not written to you to insist on it.

Is that the treatment I have deserved ?" She paused.