She had been a bone of contention all her life, and,
even when the two families were not fighting over her, the Bartlett blood
was warring with the Martel blood within her. Her standards were
hopelessly confused; she did not know what she wanted except that she
wanted passionately to be let alone.
"Nellie!" called a gentle voice on the other side of the door. "Are you
ready for dinner?"
"Don't want any dinner," she mumbled from the depths of a pillow.
The door-handle turned softly and the voice persisted:
"You must unlock the door, dearie; I want to speak to you."
Eleanor flung herself off the bed and opened the door. "I tell you, I
don't want any dinner, Aunt Enid," she declared petulantly.
Miss Enid drew her down on the bed beside her and regarded her with
pensive persuasion. "I know, Nelchen; I often feel like that. But you
must come down and make a pretense of eating. It upsets your grandmother
to have any one of us absent from meals."
"Everything I do upsets her!" cried Eleanor with tragic insistence. "I
can't please her--there's no use trying. Why does she treat me the way
she does? Why does she sometimes almost seem to hate me?"
Miss Enid's eyes involuntarily glanced at the picture of Eleanor's mother
over the desk, taken in the doublet and hose of _Rosalind_.
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