'Now don't be melodramatic; it is absurd, and to be emotional is bad taste. As one cuckoo does not make a spring any more than one swallow a summer, so no more should one affair of the human heart make up the end of a human existence.'
'Are you really in earnest about this, papa?'
'Of course, though I am not much in earnest about anything usually; it is not worth one's while.'
'At a certain age, perhaps,' thought Clare; 'but you were earnest enough once, in dismissing poor Trevor Chute.'
'You will break this matter to your sisters,' said he, preparing to leave her.
'My sisters!' said Clare, bitterly and sadly. 'Oh, papa! think of Violet's prospects with—with' (she feared to add such a chaperon)—'and of Ida, so sad, so delicate in health.'
'Nonsense, Miss Collingwood, Ida will soon marry again; such absurd grief never lasts; and I am sure that Vane loves her still.'
'Then he is not supposed to have got over "that stuff," as you think Trevor Chute and I have done.'
'Miss Collingwood, I do not like my words repeated; so with your permission we shall cease the subject, and I shall bid you good-morning.'
Whenever he was offended with any of his own family the tone he adopted was one of elaborate politeness; and twiddling his eyeglass, with a kind of Dundreary skip, this model father, this 'awful dad' of Clare, departed to the abode of his inamorata.