One night she, this dear casuist, had driven home (ah! the bitter irony of the word!) to the Via della Zecca with her father. Great clouds sagged from the sky, bellied over the house-roofs, swelling to their delivery of fire. Moans of their enormous labour shook the air, jarring on one’s teeth like glass—a night of heavy omen. Its spirit drove with them, menacing and oppressive. The Chevalier himself was a thunder-cloud, swollen with sense of injury. He scowled silent in his corner.
They had been at the Italian Comedy (to see The Representation of a Damned [female] Soul, and the audience pull off their hats, literally, to St John for his handsome conduct of her case), and thence had driven to a Conversazione at the house of the British envoy to the Court of Turin—whence these tears.
The Casa di Rocco reached, the Chevalier alighted, as was his custom, first; but, seeming to remember himself, bowed apart while the mistress of the house descended, and entered the portal. She flushed, but made no comment; and he followed in her footsteps, furious now to vent his chagrin on the least menial slight to his importance. He was very handsomely dressed, and appeared to assume, by every pomp of circumstance, the right of the mastership of the household.
The two were ushered into the salon, a room ablaze with tapers, and there left to their august disputations. The tempest threatened very near—vibrated in the windows like the pedal-stops of a vast organ.
There was wine on a table. The Chevalier, offering to pour himself out a glass with a white, not very steady hand, refrained, and looked towards his daughter.
“Have I your permission, madam?” he said. “My natural fatigue must not let me forget that I am a pensioner on your bounty.”
She fanned herself quietly. There was a light in her patient eyes, but he was blind to the warning sign.
“What have I done to deserve this?” she asked softly.
His self-control was a bubble. He dashed the decanter down on the table, and advanced a little towards her, quivering with mortified anger.
“You ask me that?” he said. “Whence have we come this moment? From what circumstances of slight and humiliation to the parent, whose devotion to his child has procured him a return which should make her blush for her ingratitude.”