She sat silent, her eyes down.
“Do you hear?” I demanded.
She fixed her gaze steadily on mine. “Yes, sir,” she answered, “but I cannot obey.”
“How dare you say that to me?” I said, so furious that I was calm. I had a sense of impotence—as if the irresistible force had struck the immovable body.
“Because what you ask isn’t right.”
“You forget that I am your father.”
“And you forget that I am”—she drew herself up proudly and looked at me unafraid—“your daughter.”
There seems to be some sort of magic in her. I can’t understand it myself, but her answer completely changed my feeling toward her. It had never before occurred to me that the fact of her being my daughter gave her rights and privileges which would be intolerable in another. I saw family pride for the first time and instantly respected it. “If I only had a son like you!” I said, on impulse, for the moment forgetting everything else in this new conception of family line and its meaning.
The tears rushed to her eyes. She leaned forward in her eagerness. “You had—you have,” she said. “Oh, father——”
“Not another word,” I said, sternly; “why did you refuse to go to Aurora’s wedding?”