“Do you mean, aunt,” she asked, “that my father thought I had gone off—with some man?”
“What else COULD he think? Would any one DREAM you would be so mad as to go off alone?”
“After—after what had happened the night before?”
“Oh, why raise up old scores? If you could see him this morning, his poor face as white as a sheet and all cut about with shaving! He was for coming up by the very first train and looking for you, but I said to him, ‘Wait for the letters,’ and there, sure enough, was yours. He could hardly open the envelope, he trembled so. Then he threw the letter at me. ‘Go and fetch her home,’ he said; ‘it isn’t what we thought! It’s just a practical joke of hers.’ And with that he went off to the City, stern and silent, leaving his bacon on his plate—a great slice of bacon hardly touched. No breakfast, he’s had no dinner, hardly a mouthful of soup—since yesterday at tea.”
She stopped. Aunt and niece regarded each other silently.
“You must come home to him at once,” said Miss Stanley.
Ann Veronica looked down at her fingers on the claret-colored table-cloth. Her aunt had summoned up an altogether too vivid picture of her father as the masterful man, overbearing, emphatic, sentimental, noisy, aimless. Why on earth couldn’t he leave her to grow in her own way? Her pride rose at the bare thought of return.
“I don’t think I CAN do that,” she said. She looked up and said, a little breathlessly, “I’m sorry, aunt, but I don’t think I can.”
Part 2
Then it was the expostulations really began.