"It is quite out of the question; impossible!"
"No, papa. If he choose,—and I choose,—no one can prevent us." As she said this she looked him full in the face.
"Do you mean to say that you owe no obedience to your parents?"
"To you, papa, of course I owe obedience,—to a certain extent. There does come a time, I suppose, in which a daughter may use her own judgment as to her own happiness."
"And disgrace all her family?"
"I do not think that I shall disgrace mine. What I want you to understand, papa, is this,—that you will not ensure my obedience by keeping me here. I think I should be more likely to be submissive at home. There is an idea in enforced control which is hardly compatible with obedience. I don't suppose you will lock me up."
"You have no right to talk to me in that way."
"I want to explain that our being here can do no good. When you are gone mamma and I will only be very unhappy together. She won't talk to me, and will look at me as though I were a poor lost creature. I don't think that I am a lost creature at all, but I shall be just as much lost here as though I were at home in England."
"When you come to talking you are as bad as your brother," said the Marquis as he left her. Only that the expression was considered to be unfit for female ears, he would have accused her of "talking the hind legs off a dog."
When he was gone the life at Königsgraaf became very sombre indeed. Mr. George Roden's name was never mentioned by either of the ladies. There was the Post Office, no doubt, and the Post Office was at first left open to her; but there soon came a time in which she was deprived of this consolation. With such a guardian as the Marchioness, it was not likely that free correspondence should be left open to her.