"Take it, Muriel," he said quietly.
"It is going to do you good." She flashed him a desperate glance in which anger, fear, abhorrence, were strongly mingled.

He advanced the biscuit a little nearer.

There was a queer look on his yellow face, almost a bullying look.
"Take it," he said again.
And against her will, almost without conscious movement, she obeyed him.

The untempting morsel passed from his hand to hers, and under the compulsion of his insistence she began to eat.
She felt as if every mouthful would choke her, but she persevered, urged by the dread certainty that he would somehow have his way.
Not until the last fragment was gone did she feel his vigilance relax, but he ate nothing himself though there remained several biscuits and a very little of the rice.
"You are feeling better ?" he asked her then.
A curious suspicion that he was waiting to tell her something made her answer almost feverishly in the affirmative.

It amounted to a premonition of evil tidings, and instinctively her thoughts flew to her father.
"What is it ?" she questioned nervously.