“More latitude than in America. I have talked with Hugh, too. He is—very difficult. Really, he isn’t at all as he seemed. He is a—he is horribly coarse.”
“People who think of nothing but how to get money without work and how to spend it without usefulness are apt to be coarse, when you probe through to the reality of them.”
“He is—defiant,” pursued she, too femininely practical to have interest in or patience with philosophy. “He— Godfrey, he says he hates her. He won’t speak to her. And there’s no prospect of an heir. He says he wants to get rid of her.”
These successive admissions of a worse and worse mess were forced from her by my air of indifference. “What has she done?” I asked.
“Done? I don’t understand——”
“What has she done to drive him to extremes?”
“Godfrey!” she cried in a shocked tone. “You—taking sides against your daughter—your only child! Have you no paternal feeling, either?”
“Not much,” said I. “You see, I’ve seen little of Margot—not enough to get acquainted with her. And you educated her so that we are uncongenial. No—since you set me to thinking, I find I haven’t much paternal feeling for her. I used to have in Passaic, when I wheeled her about the streets on Sundays.”
I paused to enjoy the shame my wife was struggling with.
“But soon after we moved to Brooklyn——”