They were words which would make any Catholic shudder to
hear. It was a pity he had used them, for they made her think at last
that her mother had been treated with injustice. This, in spite of the
fact that in the days, now so far away, when her mother was with them she
had ever been nearer to her father, and that, after first childhood, she
and her mother were not so close as they had been, when she went to sleep
to the humming of a chanson of Cadiz. Her own latent motherhood, however,
kept stealing up out of the dim distances of childhood's ignorance and,
with modesty and allusiveness, whispering knowledge in her ear. So it was
that now she looked back pensively to the years she had spent within
sight and sound of her handsome mother, and out of the hunger of her own
spirit she had come to idealize her memory. It was good to have a loving
father; but he was a man, and he was so busy just when she wanted--when
she wanted she knew not what, but at least to go and lay her head on a
heart that would understand what was her sorrow, her joy, or her longing.
And now here at last was come Crisis, which showed its thunderous head in
the gay dance, and shook his war-locks in the fire, where her mother's
guitar had shrieked in its last agony.
When all the guests had gone, when the bolts had been shot home, and old
Seraphe Corniche had gone to bed, father and daughter came face to face.
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