You
change about so."
This attack was unexpected, for Mrs. Penniman was not used, in any
discussion, to seeing the war carried into her own country--possibly
because the enemy generally had doubts of finding subsistence there.
To her own consciousness, the flowery fields of her reason had rarely
been ravaged by a hostile force. It was perhaps on this account that
in defending them she was majestic rather than agile.
"I don't know what you accuse me of, save of being too deeply
interested in your happiness. It is the first time I have been told
I am capricious. That fault is not what I am usually reproached
with."
"You were angry last year that I wouldn't marry immediately, and now
you talk about my winning my father over. You told me it would serve
him right if he should take me to Europe for nothing. Well, he has
taken me for nothing, and you ought to be satisfied. Nothing is
changed--nothing but my feeling about father. I don't mind nearly so
much now. I have been as good as I could, but he doesn't care. Now
I don't care either. I don't know whether I have grown bad; perhaps
I have. But I don't care for that. I have come home to be married--
that's all I know. That ought to please you, unless you have taken
up some new idea; you are so strange. You may do as you please; but
you must never speak to me again about pleading with father. I shall
never plead with him for anything; that is all over.
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