“Stop a moment; you must hear this.”
He pushed away the call of business; he would rather have read it himself, when he found time, at luncheon perhaps. He hated to be read to. He couldn’t concentrate; his mind wandered off in figures. She read in a low voice very rapidly, stopping now and again; he knew she was skipping something; he wasn’t offended. He had always felt like a third party, and thought of Joseph as “Julie’s boy.” It was an interesting letter written in picturesque metaphors, just the way Julie’s mother used to speak, thought Floyd. The boy told of his many visits to Frankfort, and of closer acquaintance with Pedro Gonzala, and his granddaughter. They had given a costume ball to celebrate her sixteenth birthday.
“A costume ball—that’s rather sporty,” remarked Floyd. He had in mind those French masquerades given in his youth, where Martin danced the Can-Can with indecent French women.
“Oh, no,” answered Julie, “listen; Joseph explains it.
“This was a ball, where the family personated their ancestors, the portraits in the gallery. Ruth took me around, told me their history for generations back. Wonderful, so full of struggle, tragedy, romance. I couldn’t hear enough of it!”
“It didn’t affect me like that—those portraits you sent away gave me a cold chill.”
“They were not your ancestors,” said Julie with a touch of sarcasm. Then she went on reading.
“They called one of the portraits ‘the unhappy Pedro Gonzala,’ because he was an illegitimate son. That was Grandfather! I couldn’t tear myself away from him; he had such brave defiant eyes. Dearest Mother, I think it is a great injustice to brand a human being like that. There is nothing illegitimate in Nature. I’d rather be the child of love, than of calculation born in wedlock.”
Floyd frowned.
“I don’t approve of those views. I’m afraid the boy is catching European radicalism.”