"Is there anything you want that you do not get?" demanded Mr. Stanton.
"Yes," cried Hélène, "there is love, love! I do not get it! Your manner is cold, hard, repellent!"
"How dare you!" shouted her father.
"I repeat it!" cried Hélène, now utterly regardless of consequences. "Something in you repels me. I came to you this morning with the news of my engagement of marriage. I came to you with earnest longing to have you take me into your arms and kiss me, to have you congratulate me on my happiness. Instead of this you repelled me with cold calculations as to the effect the marriage would have on your own social position. Oh, father, father! is that the way to sympathise with a girl? I have no mother; you should supply her place. All the luxuries in this palace don't make up to me for the lack of love I find in it."
"Is it my fault that your mother died when you were eight years old?" said Mr. Stanton in a milder tone. The reference to his dead wife had had a softening influence upon him.
"No, no, father; no, no! I can't help thinking of her now, that's all! I need her now, so much. I have no one to go to but you, and—" the girl shook her head helplessly. "I can just remember her, so delicate, so beautiful! She was an angel, wasn't she?"
He nodded assent. "I remember that she was always in tears, always afraid to go out in the streets, afraid to be seen," said Hélène somewhat irrelevantly. "You did love her, didn't you? I always feel you did! Why, why can't you love me as you did her? Why am I not as near to you as she was? Your own flesh and blood should be very near and very dear to you; especially at such a time as this."
He regarded her more tenderly. "You are near me," he said and kissed her. "Poor little thing," he muttered to himself. "I suppose I am selfish," he said aloud, "but you'll have my money some day. Surely that should give you a great deal of comfort!"
Hélène smiled sadly. Her father seemed incapable of understanding her. She could only shake her head and say, "That's nothing, nothing!"
"You'll find it a great deal, my girl," he said.