“The trusteeship will not be terminated for a year—on your twenty-first birthday, unless you should marry before the end of that time. This is always an emergency to look forward to; but I trust you will be in no hurry to leave me.”
He looked at her again in his quick, nervous way. His voice showed the first hint of the whine of senility.
Zelda laughed abruptly.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?—the getting married. I honestly hadn’t thought of it before. I don’t know any young men. We didn’t meet any men abroad except very old ones. Aunt Julia was afraid the young men weren’t respectable!”
“There’s nothing like being careful where young men are concerned. There are many bad ones about these days. The temptations of modern life are increasing fast. A young girl can have no idea of them.”
“Who’s afraid?” she said, and laughed again.
He tried to laugh; he was making an effort to be friendly, to accommodate himself to his daughter’s ways, to understand her if he could.
The girl rose and walked restlessly about the room, picking up and throwing down the papers on the table; and then she examined several steel engravings on the walls. She had been at home a week, but the place was still unfamiliar.
A plate of apples had been placed on the table, and presently the old man took a knife and began paring one carefully. The girl paused in her restless wandering about the room, and turned to watch him. He had ceased trying to talk to her. There was something of pathos in his bent figure as he sat peeling the apple. She watched him silently, touched by his weight of years, and the feeling of loneliness left her suddenly. It had seemed hard and difficult at first, but it was only a kind of homesickness; this was home, and this was her father. There were things about him that moved her pity. His clothes were scrupulously neat; his linen was clean and his collar was carefully turned down over a high cravat, suggesting the stock of another time. His gray hair was long, and fell down on his coat, but it was carefully brushed.
Zelda went over and stood by him, and he looked up at her and smiled,—an impersonal, martyr-like smile.