On the evening in question she had absolutely refused to walk with him.

Her mother found that threats were as vain as coaxing.

Even her threat of dying with heart-disease, then and there, killed by her daughter's disobedience, could not move Julia, who would not even speak with the "spider." Her mother took her into the sitting-room alone, and talked with her.
"So this is the way you trifle with gentlemen, is it?
Night before last you engaged yourself to Mr.Humphreys, now you won't speak to him.

To think that my daughter should prove a heartless flirt!" I am afraid that the unfilial thought came into Julia's mind that nothing could have been more in the usual order of things than that the daughter of a coquette should be a flirt.
"You'll kill me on the spot; you certainly will." Julia felt anxious, for her mother showed signs of going into hysterics.

But she put her foot out and shook her head in a way that said that all her friends might die and all the world might go to pieces before she would yield.
Mrs.Anderson had one forlorn hope.