"Dawn, my dear, you are your mother once again," he said with a sigh; "I have never seen you, and now you are sufficiently grown to be married."
"Yes," said the girl.
"Will you give me a kiss?"
"I'd rather not. You see you are only a stranger to me. I have never heard of you only as the man who was a monster to my mother. I never saw her, but I remember to love her for what she did for me, whereas you, what did you do for her and me? I would like you to understand how I feel on this subject, so that there can be no mistake," said the girl honestly.
"Oh, well, I didn't come here to be told that, but to give consent to your marriage."
"Oh!" said the girl, rearing the pretty head with its wealth of bright hair, "as for that, I'm going to marry. If you like to exercise your authority I'll run away and you can't unmarry me. It is at grandma's wish you are here; she said to let old bitterness sleep for the time you are here, and so I will now that I have explained that I utterly refuse to recognise that a father is anything but a stranger unless he discharges the responsibilities of the office. For the sake of the race I maintain this ground," she concluded in words that had been put into her mouth by one of the speakers at Ada Grosvenor's election league, and the appearance of the ladies put an end to further contention.
Dawn's judgments were remorseless, as becoming clean-souled, fearless youth as yet unacquainted with the great gulf 'twixt the ideal and real, and untainted by that charity and complaisance which, like senility, come with advancing years.
The aunt was elderly and unprepossessing, and the stepmother of the type bespeaking champagne and too much eating for the exercise taken, for her head was partly sunk in a huge mass of adipose substance that had once been bosom, and the other proportions of her figure were in keeping.
The cups were spread in the dining-room, so thither we repaired to eat and drink while representations of Jim Clay and Jake Sorrel, senior, who had wept for the sufferings of the convicts, glowered down upon the gathering of plebeians who were half swells and the swells who were wholly plebeian.
Presently grandma and I excused ourselves and left Dawn with her relations.