He leaned towards her, his mouth open, his eyes wild with virtuous anger, but meeting the absolute candour of her raised glance threw himself back into his corner again.
“So tremendously in love with each other—was that it? Couldn’t let a father have his daughter all to himself even for a day after—after such a separation. And you know I never had anyone, I had no friends. What did I want with those people one meets in the City. The best of them are ready to cut your throat. Yes! Business men, gentlemen, any sort of men and women—out of spite, or to get something. Oh yes, they can talk fair enough if they think there’s something to be got out of you . . . ” His voice was a mere breath yet every word came to Flora as distinctly as if charged with all the moving power of passion . . . “My girl, I looked at them making up to me and I would say to myself: What do I care for all that! I am a business man. I am the great Mr. de Barral (yes, yes, some of them twisted their mouths at it, but I was the great Mr. de Barral) and I have my little girl. I wanted nobody and I have never had anybody.”
A true emotion had unsealed his lips but the words that came out of them were no louder than the murmur of a light wind. It died away.
“That’s just it,” said Flora de Barral under her breath. Without removing his eyes from her he took off his hat. It was a tall hat. The hat of the trial. The hat of the thumb-nail sketches in the illustrated papers. One comes out in the same clothes, but seclusion counts! It is well known that lurid visions haunt secluded men, monks, hermits—then why not prisoners? De Barral the convict took off the silk hat of the financier de Barral and deposited it on the front seat of the cab. Then he blew out his cheeks. He was red in the face.
“And then what happens?” he began again in his contained voice. “Here I am, overthrown, broken by envy, malice and all uncharitableness. I come out—and what do I find? I find that my girl Flora has gone and married some man or other, perhaps a fool, how do I know; or perhaps—anyway not good enough.”
“Stop, papa.”
“A silly love affair as likely as not,” he continued monotonously, his thin lips writhing between the ill-omened sunk corners. “And a very suspicious thing it is too, on the part of a loving daughter.”
She tried to interrupt him but he went on till she actually clapped her hand on his mouth. He rolled his eyes a bit but when she took her hand away he remained silent.
“Wait. I must tell you . . . And first of all, papa, understand this, for everything’s in that: he is the most generous man in the world. He is . . . ”
De Barral very still in his corner uttered with an effort “You are in love with him.”