"Oh, no, no! How small and egotistical all your ideas are! He
never mentioned you, and probably never thought of you. He only
took a little pains that a tired and dispirited man might see and
feel the eternal beauty and freshness of nature, as one might give,
in passing, a cup of water to a traveller."
"I don't see what reason you have for feeling and appearing so
forlornly, thus asking for sympathy from strangers, as it were,
and causing it to seem as if we were making a martyr of you. As
for this artist, with his superior airs, I detest him. He never
loses a chance to annoy and mortify me. I've no doubt he hoped
you would come home and tell us, as you have, how much better he
was than---"
"There, there, quit that kind of talk or I'll be drunk in half
an hour." said her father, harshly. "If you had the heart of a
woman, let alone that of a daughter, you would thank the man who
had unwittingly kept me from making a beast of myself for one day
at least. Go down to your dinner, I'm in no mood for eating."
She went without a word, but with a more severe compunction of
conscience than she had ever felt before in her life. Her father's
face and words smote her with a keen reproach, piercing the thick
armor of her vanity and selfishness.
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