She was at least seeing things from Shaw's point
of view. Her resentment was not against the policy of her brother, but
the overbearing, petulant tyranny of her American sister-in-law. From
the beginning she had disliked Evelyn; now she despised her. With the
loyal simplicity of a sister she absolved Cecil of all real blame in
the outrage of the morning, attributing everything to the cruelty and
envy of the despot who held the purse-strings from which dangled
the pliable fortunes of Bazelhurst. The Bazelhursts, one and
all--ancestors thrown in--swung back and forth on the pendulum of her
capriciousness. Penelope, poor as a church mouse, was almost wholly
dependent upon her brother, who in turn owed his present affluence to
the more or less luckless movement of the matrimonial market. The girl
had a small, inadequate income--so small it was almost worth jesting
about.
Here was Penelope, twenty-two, beautiful, proud, fair-minded, and
healthy, surveying herself for the first time from a new and an
entirely different point of view. She was not pleased with the
picture. She began to loathe herself more than she pitied her brother.
Something like a smile came into her clouded face as she speculated on
Randolph Shaw's method of handling Evelyn Banks had she fallen to him
as a wife. The quiet power in that man's face signified the presence
of a manhood that--ah, and just here it occurred to her that Lady
Bazelhurst felt the force of that power even though she never had seen
the man.
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