“By God, I’m sorry for the poor boy!”
His daughter rose suddenly with a rustling of crushed silks. The sound brought him back in an instant and he leaned over the arm of his chair, his cigar in his left hand, his right waving the smoke wreaths from before his face. Rose’s hand, pressing her crumpled napkin on the table, shone pink in the lamplight, her shoulder gleamed white through its lace covering, but her face was averted.
“Going up now?” he asked, leaning still farther over the chair-arm to see her beyond the lamp’s wide shade.
She appeared not to hear and moved toward the door.
“Going to bed already, Rosey?” he asked in a louder key.
“Yes, I’m tired,” her voice came a little hoarse and she did not look at him. At the doorway she stopped, her hand on the edge of the portière, and without turning, cleared her throat and said, “The cow and the chickens were too much for me. I’m too sleepy to talk any more. Good night, papa.”
“Good-night, Rosey,” he answered.
The portière fell softly behind her, and her footfall was lost in the thickness of the carpets. Though he had not seen her face, her father had an alarming, an almost terrifying idea, that his darling had left the table in tears.
He sat on for some time, stonily motionless, save for the movement of his lips as he puffed out clouds of smoke. The soft-footed servants, coming to clear the table, fled before his growled command to “get out and let him alone.” As he smoked he looked straight before him with fixed, unwinking eyes, his face set in furrows of thought. At long intervals he stirred in his chair, ponderously, like an inert, heavy animal, and now and then he emitted a short sound, like a grunted comment on some thought, which, by its biting suddenness, seemed to force an ejaculation out of him.