"Not even by your parents?"
"Yes."
"For instance, that your parents are dead for you, as well as your other relations."
"You read the letter?"
"You see I did."
"Then I have nothing more to say or to ask."
Helen bowed and was about to leave the room.
"Stay!" said the baroness; "if you have nothing more to say, I have some questions to ask, which you will be good enough to answer. As for the letter, you need not give yourself any more trouble about it. When parents permit their children to correspond without surveillance, they expect that their children will be worthy of such a privilege. When they see themselves deceived in this expectation they withdraw the privilege. That is perfectly natural. But it is not at all natural that a child, after having received nothing but affection from her parents, should abandon them at once; it is not natural, when a child has the boldness to conceive such a thought, to write it down, and to communicate her disgrace to others. What can you say in reply?"
"Nothing."
"And if such a child takes all the love she owes her parents, and all the affection she owes her other relatives, and bestows them upon strangers, for instance, upon a so-called friend, whose only merit consists in having been at the same boarding-school, or upon a boy who has been taken into the house from charity, or upon a paid servant of her parents,--yes, miss! a paid servant, with whom the parents, moreover, are very much dissatisfied,--what can you say to that?"