“God forbid! I love you too well to endanger your peace of mind, and I will do all I can to protect you from anything which might cause you pain and suffering. I have opened your eyes, for you must know how to discern, at a given moment, the causes of certain events, and the bearing of certain expressions. Leave to me the responsibility of assuring your security and happiness.”
“Can I go and see Madeline again?”
“Why should you? If you do not call on her what will prevent her coming to see you?”
“I shall be at the convent.”
“Not for ever.”
The young girl gave her father a beseeching look as she said—
“Ah! If you would only let me stay with you, how pleased I should be.”
Lichtenbach’s face lit up with an expression of joy and gladness.
“What would you do here?” he asked good humouredly.
“I would keep the house for you. There is great need of it, though I do not wish to criticize. A woman would not leave this fine mansion in so gloomy and so dismal-looking a condition. So little would be needed to arrange the rooms so as to make them comfortable and agreeable. Besides, you could devote yourself entirely to your own work, and you would see how much better everything would go. It is not a man’s rôle to give orders to servants. Would you not like to have some one about you who would ever be affectionately on the watch to attend to your every need and comfort? I am eighteen years old now; they no longer know what to teach me at the convent. Very soon it will be I who will be giving lessons to the pupils. Have I been born into the world to be a teacher at the Sacre-Cœur? You have a daughter; she does not belong to others, she is your own. Why don’t you keep her to yourself?”