"He bounded to my side; he seized my arm and shook it. "'Drop that foolish talk,' he cried. 'I will hear no more of it, nor of your staying in the house on that account or any other. You will go out to-morrow. You will go out with Mr. Harding. You will----' "'Father,' I put in, chill as ice, 'do you expect to carry me out in your arms?' "He fell back; he was a small man, my father, and I, as you know, am large for a woman. "'You vixen!' he muttered, 'curses on the day when you were born!' "'That curse has been already pronounced,' I muttered. "He stood still, he made no answer, he seemed to be gathering himself together for a final appeal. Had he looked at me a little longer; had he shown any sympathy for my position, any appreciation for my wrongs, or any compunction for the share he had taken in them, I might have shown myself to have possessed some womanly softness and latent gentleness. But instead of that he took on in those few frightful moments such a look of cold, calculating hate that I was at once steeled and appalled. I hardly knew what he said when he cried at last: "'Once! twice! thrice! Will you do what I desire, Hermione?' "I only knew he had asked something I could not grant, so I answered, with what calmness I could, in the old formula, now for some months gone into disuse, 'I will not,' and sank, weary with my own emotions, into a chair. "He gave me one look--I shall never forget it,--and threw up his arms with what sounded like an imprecation. "'Then your sin be upon your own head!' he cried, and without another word left the room. "I was frightened; never had I seen such an expression on mortal face before. And this was my father; the man who had courted my mother; who had put the ring upon her finger at the altar; who had sat at her dying bed and smiled as she whispered: 'For a busy man, you have always been a good husband to me.' Was this or that the real man as he was? Had these depths been always hidden within him, or had I created them there by my hardness and disobedience? I will never know." XXIV. FATHER AND CHILD. "The night which followed this day was a sleepless one for me. Yet how I dreaded the morning! How I shrank from the first sight of my father's face! Had Auntie Lovell been with us I should have prevailed upon her to have gone to him and tried to smooth the way to some sort of reconciliation between us, but she was in Chicago, and I was not yet upon such terms with Emma that I could bear to make of her a go-between. I preferred to meet him without apology, and by dutifulness in all other respects make him forget in time my failure to oblige him in one. _I had made up my mind to go out of the house that day, though not with Mr. Harding._