“Your marriage seems to have changed you,” he said finally.
“For the better, I hope!”
“Well, that’s according to the way you look at it. Cutting your old father cold isn’t for the better, as far as I can see.”
She did not resent the ungenerous use of that phrase, “old father,” though she could not help remembering that he was still under fifty, and that he looked young for his years. It was just one of his mannerisms in speaking.
“I didn’t do that, you know,” she said. “Being married seems a wonderful adventure. There is so much that is strange for you to get used to. But I didn’t forget you. You’ve seen Antonia—occasionally...?”
The man moved his head so that it lay on one side against the chair-back. “I thought you’d throw that up to me,” he complained.
“Father!” she remonstrated. She was deeply wounded. It had not been her father’s way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had softened his faults to one who loved him.
“Well, never mind,” he said, in a less bitter tone. And she waited, hoping he would think of friendlier words to speak, now that his resentment had been voiced.
But he seemed ill at ease in her presence now. She might have been a stranger to him. She looked about her with a certain fond expression which speedily faded. Somehow the old things reminded her only of unhappiness. They were meaner than she had supposed them to be. Their influence over her was gone.
She brought her gaze back to her father. He had closed his eyes as if he were weary; yet she discerned in the lines of his face a hard fixity which troubled her, alarmed her. Though his eyes were closed he did not present a reposeful aspect. There was something really sinister about that alert face with its closed eyes—as there is about a house with its blinds drawn to hide evil enterprises.