After that remark father and daughter went some little way in silence.
“Explain to me, my child, how it happens that a girl whom her mother idolizes could have taken such an important step as to write to a stranger without consulting her.”
“Oh, papa! because mamma would never have allowed it.”
“And do you think, my daughter, that that was proper? Though you have been educating your mind in this fatal way, how is it that your good sense and your intellect did not, in default of modesty, step in and show you that by acting as you did you were throwing yourself at a man’s head. To think that my daughter, my only remaining child, should lack pride and delicacy! Oh, Modeste, you made your father pass two hours in hell when he heard of it; for, after all, your conduct has been the same as Bettina’s without the excuse of a heart’s seduction; you were a coquette in cold blood, and that sort of coquetry is head-love, the worst vice of French women.”
“I, without pride!” said Modeste, weeping; “but he has not yet seen me.”
“He knows your name.”
“I did not tell it to him till my eyes had vindicated the correspondence, lasting three months, during which our souls had spoken to each other.”
“Oh, my dear misguided angel, you have mixed up a species of reason with a folly that has compromised your own happiness and that of your family.”
“But, after all, papa, happiness is the absolution of my temerity,” she said, pouting.
“Oh! your conduct is temerity, is it?”