“You talk of your honour. What is man’s honour to a maid’s? Yet, for your honour’s sake, you could sell mine—a father sell his child’s! Once you did it, and I was obedient, though it broke my heart.”
“I will not listen,” he raged.
“You shall listen,” she answered. “I could have borne to suffer and be silent—that first irremediable wrong. I believed your honour pledged, and I gave myself to redeem it—you know under what persuasion. But now—having once sold me—me, your child—to dishonour for your honour’s sake—to think to trade upon my forfeited self-respect, as if myself, not you, were answerable for it!—to build yourself a name on mine so fallen!—O, shame, shame, my father!”
She quite overawed him. He had evoked the spirit of his house in her to startling effect. He had no answer but oaths and hysteria.
“Woman!” he shrieked.
“I am sixteen,” she said. “You call me as you have made me—is it to my reproach or to yours? But, if I am woman, in her sad name I claim her saddest rights—freedom through martyrdom. I will be independent; I will be mistress of my soul; I will not hold myself a convicted wanton at your honour’s bidding. This man you offer me—this man whom you would bid to cast down my body for a stepping-stone to your own ambition—do you know what he is, has been—his life, his reputation?”
He was silent, but only because his rage grew inarticulate.
“I am not so hardened,” she went on, “but that I can shrink and shudder in the shadow of such a name. He to be worthy of me—me!—O, father!” (She wavered for one instant.) “Have I not been willing, eager, that you should take everything of mine—everything, everything—only not this one poor possession that I cannot part with, and remain your worthy daughter?”
Her eyes were moist, she held out piteous hands to him. But his passion by now was swelled to a monstrous thing, deaf, blind, suicidal.
“Stand off!” he shrieked, backing from her as if he loathed her contact. “You are worthy of nothing but a father’s curse.”