"Ah! you have found that out already?"
"Yes; and nobody ever thinks of coming to you with one. They are all afraid of you--the servants, your clerks, mamma even--every one but me."
"You are not afraid?"
"No!"
The answer came boldly and resolutely from the young lady's lips. She seemed to have reassumed her warlike attitude, and to have determined this time on exasperating the dreaded guardian--but in vain. He remained perfectly calm, and appeared rather amused than offended at his ward's spirit of contradiction.
"It is fortunate your mother is not here," he remarked. "She would be a prey to the keenest anxiety, and quite despair of the perverse young head which will not bend to necessity, as she herself does with admirable self-abnegation. You should take example by her."
"Oh, yes! mamma is docility itself where you are concerned," cried Gabrielle, growing more and more excited; "and she expects the same from me. But I will not play the hypocrite, and I cannot like you. Uncle Arno, for you are not good to us, and never have been good to us. Your very reception of us when we came was so humiliating that I should have been glad to go away again at once; and since then you have daily and hourly let us feel that we are dependent on you. You treat my mother with a disrespect which often makes me go hot with indignation. You speak in a slighting way of my papa, who is dead and cannot defend himself, and you behave to me as though I were a sort of toy not to be thought of seriously. You have taken us in, and we live in your Castle, where everything is much grander and finer than in my own home, but I would far rather be away in our Swiss exile, as mamma calls it--in our little house by the lake, which was so simple and modest, where we had barely what was necessary, but where, at least, we were free from you and your tyranny. Mamma insists on it I must bear it, because you are rich, and because my future depends on your favour. But I do not want your money; I do not care about being your heiress. I should like to go away from here; the sooner the better!"
She had sprung up from her seat and stood facing him, glowing with passionate excitement, one little foot firmly planted in advance, her head thrown back, her eyes brimming with tears of anger and of mortification; but there was more in this stormy outbreak than the mere defiance of a wayward child. Every word betrayed intense and deeply-wounded feelings; and there was, indeed, but too much truth in the accusation she thus boldly launched at her guardian.
Raven had uttered no syllable of interruption. He had stood immovable, his gaze riveted on her face; but now, as she ceased speaking, and, drawing a long breath, pressed her hands on her bosom, while a torrent of hot tears burst from her eyes, he stooped down suddenly and said, with great earnestness:
"Do not cry, Gabrielle. To you, at least, I have been unjust. I own it."