One of the Almond boys, as
Catherine called him, invited our heroine to dance a quadrille, and
for a quarter of an hour her feet at least were occupied. This time
she was not dizzy; her head was very clear. Just when the dance was
over, she found herself in the crowd face to face with her father.
Dr. Sloper had usually a little smile, never a very big one, and with
his little smile playing in his clear eyes and on his neatly-shaved
lips, he looked at his daughter's crimson gown.
"Is it possible that this magnificent person is my child?" he said.
You would have surprised him if you had told him so; but it is a
literal fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the
ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but
she had to cut her pleasure out of the piece, as it were. There were
portions left over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she
never knew what to do with, which seemed too delicate for her own
use; and yet Catherine, lamenting the limitations of her
understanding, felt that they were too valuable to waste and had a
belief that if they passed over her head they yet contributed to the
general sum of human wisdom.
"I am not magnificent," she said mildly, wishing that she had put on
another dress.
"You are sumptuous, opulent, expensive," her father rejoined. "You
look as if you had eighty thousand a year."
"Well, so long as I haven't--" said Catherine illogically.
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