Val opened astonished eyes. Her father was indeed forgiving—fantastically generous. He was gazing off into space now, and his look was strangely lighted.
"She belongs to the heroic age," he said, with a kind of worship in his face. "She was born before we began to split hairs, and have nerves instead of nerve."
Val couldn't stand it. Her father was worth fifty grandmothers.
"I should imagine she thought she was a pretty fine sort of person."
"She hasn't a notion how utterly she stands alone. I've gone up and down the world for over forty years, and never seen her equal. Her equal?"
He laughed derisively, and began to talk of her as he might have talked of Semiramis or Boadicea, only more vividly. It was very annoying. He had come to care about her too, "only more so." But the real blow fell when it came out that he had felt like this all along. Appreciation, fairness were all very well, but this besotted heroine-worship was a little pitiable. All these years that Val had been so sure he was silently nursing his injuries and modestly contemplating his own superiority, he had been on the side of the oppressor.
"H'm!" mused Val. "I s'pose she was different, then, to her own children."
"Ah yes; I've often observed the softening of late years."
"The what?"