“Very well, Felicia, folly be it. I can only say that your conduct in this, as in other respects, deeply distresses me. You are altogether changed.”
“I changed? In what respect?”
Mr. Merrick paused to review swiftly all the respects, before saying, “You have become cynical, ungenerous, disloyal.”
Felicia’s amusement hardened to stern gravity. She grew even paler, laying down her sewing as she said, “Ungenerous? Disloyal? I?”
“You, Felicia. It has given me the very greatest pain.”
“How have I been ungenerous? disloyal?”
Her father did not meet her eyes.
“You have been ungenerous to a very noble woman, who only asked to be your friend. You have been disloyal to me.”
“To you!” Her interjections were like swift knives, cutting at his careful deliberateness. “What do you mean?”
“You thought fit, moved by this influence that I deplore—quite apart from its open antagonism to my claims on you—to scoff and jeer at my essay. It would have been enough to have expressed your dislike to me alone.” His eyes now turned to her.