"Are you afraid of me?"
The sweet mouth quivered, but the clear lustrous eyes did not sink.
"Yes, sir; I have always been afraid of you."
"Do you regard me as a monster of cruelty?"
"No, sir."
"Will your conscience allow you to say, 'My guardian, I am glad to see you'?"
She was silent.
"That is right, little girl. Be perfectly truthful, and some day we may be friends. Sit down."
He handed her a chair, and, rolling forward one of the deep cushioned seats, made himself comfortable in its soft luxurious latitude. Throwing his massive head back against the purple velvet lining, he adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles, joined his hands, and built a pyramid with his fingers; while he scrutinized her as coldly, as searchingly as Swammerdam or Leeuwenhoek might have inspected some new and as yet unclassified animalculum, or as Filippi or Pasteur studied the causes of "Pébrine."
"What do you think of New York?"