Stella Rosevelt — page 207: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

STAR’?S DETERMINATION. 201 have heretofore possessed upon him, I now mos/ cheer fully resign it in favor of Miss Richards.” Were ever words so cutting? Was there ever so barbed a sentence so calmly uttered before? ‘ Mrs. Richards ground her teeth with rage over the fact that the man whom poor, despised Star Gladstone thus spurned, believing him to be the very soul of dishonor, she knew Jose- phine was using all her arts to win, while of course she could not undeceive her because it would spoil her plot. ‘*You are an insolent, overbearing girl,” she said, in a low, hissing tone, ‘‘and I wonder how I have tolerated you in my hause as long as I have. I wonder how you dare face me, and use such insulting language to me after your shameless conduct.” ‘‘T am neither insolent nor overbearing, Mrs. Richards. Ever since I came into your house I have-striven to do as nearly right as I knew how, and to make as little trouble as possible. It is you who have been overbearing, who have wounded me by insulting the memory of my parents, and have tried to crush and trample upon me. In no way have I re- belled ‘against your authority, except in the determination not to become a common servant and to pursue my education. This I did in justice to myself, and because I had promised my father I would doit. If you have ‘tolerated me in your house,’ believe me, there has been as much toleration exercised upon my part, for in no sense of the word has it been a ome to me; instead, it has been merely a place of shelter, a spot to exist in until [ could complete my education. I can bear it no longer. I shall consider your house no longer my home,” Star con- cluded, with a decision which rather startled Mrs. Richards. But she retorted, derisively : ‘“Your independent spirit ill becomes you. Where could you go? Who would take you, a penniless beggar, and give you the advantages which you have been enjoying during the Gomichbook