"You know all, my kind papa?" she said as soon as they were on the
road to the beach.
"I know all, and a good deal more than you do," he replied.
After that remark father and daughter went some little way in silence.
"Explain to me, my child, how it happens that a girl whom her mother
idolizes could have taken such an important step as to write to a
stranger without consulting her."
"Oh, papa! because mamma would never have allowed it."
"And do you think, my daughter, that that was proper? Though you have
been educating your mind in this fatal way, how is it that your good
sense and your intellect did not, in default of modesty, step in and
show you that by acting as you did you were throwing yourself at a
man's head. To think that my daughter, my only remaining child, should
lack pride and delicacy! Oh, Modeste, you made your father pass two
hours in hell when he heard of it; for, after all, your conduct has
been the same as Bettina's without the excuse of a heart's seduction;
you were a coquette in cold blood, and that sort of coquetry is
head-love, the worst vice of French women.
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