Mechanically Aimée advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her eyes—and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant passion of her spirit....
Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so, careless, callous—or was it only a father's semblance, and did there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and broken her heart—?
Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his power,—but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul.
It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was severed forever.
She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered.
And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear and supplication.
Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored.
And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his paternal benediction and hastened the phrases.
Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs for the journey to the bridegroom's house.
That day Aimée did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little maids of honor.