“So we have got that beast back again? I thought he had gone for good,” said Edala, her straight, clear glance full on her father’s face.
“Meaning Manamandhla? So did I, but I don’t think he’ll stay long—no, not long.”
Still she kept her glance upon him, and though the words were spoken easily, naturally, and without any outward intonation of significance, it seemed to Thornhill that the girl read his thoughts, his intent. She, like himself, could school her face, yet not altogether. Its expression now seemed to reveal horror, loathing, repulsion—yet not for Manamandhla. Reading it, something moved him to say:
“I have been thinking things over, Edala, and perhaps, after all, I can see my way towards letting you carry out your cherished wish—that of going to Europe to study art seriously. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She made no answer. He had expected her to brighten up at the suggestion.
“You are not happy here, and I—well perhaps I am getting more than a little tired of living in an atmosphere of chronic suspicion and repulse. And yet, child, the time may come—and come too late—when you will bitterly regret the care of a father who has been to you as very few fathers within my experience have ever been to their children—in fact, I can hardly recall the case of one. But there—ingratitude is only to be expected, in fact nothing else could be under all the circumstances.”
This with intense bitterness. His self control had momentarily broken down. The girl, who had begun to soften, grew hard again.
“I don’t know that I’ve anything to be so thankful and appreciative over—under all the circumstances,” she said, with a scathing emphasis on the echo of his words. He looked at her fixedly, sadly.
“Not now, but that will come. That will come—perhaps when it is too late.”