"Why are you going away—why will you not live here with mamma?"
Again the man flushed hotly. He was guiltily conscious that she knew well enough why.
"I—we are not congenial, and it is better that we live apart," he faltered, as he shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Then, becoming suddenly furious in view of being thus arraigned by his own child, he thundered: "Now I command you to give me your reason for refusing to live with me during some portion of each year! I know," he went on, more temperately, "that you love your mother, and I would not wish to take you from her altogether; but I am your father—I certainly have some claim upon you, and it is natural that I should desire to keep you with me some of the time. Now, tell me at once your objections to the plan," he concluded sternly.
The interview had been a severe strain upon the delicately organized and proud-spirited girl, and she had found great difficulty in preserving her self-control up to this point; but now his tone and manner were like spark to powder.
"Because—— Oh, because I think you are just horrid! I used to think you such a gentleman, and I was proud of you; but now you have shamed me so! No, I don't love you, and I wouldn't go to live with you and—and that dreadful woman for anything!" she recklessly threw back at him.
For a minute John Hungerford stood speechless, staring blankly at his child, his face and lips colorless and drawn. Her words had stabbed him cruelly.
"Dorothy, you are impertinent!" he said severely, when he could command his voice.
She caught her breath sharply; she bit her lips fiercely, her white teeth leaving deep imprints upon them; then passion swept all before it.
"I know it—I feel impertinent! I feel awful wicked, as if I could do something dreadful!" she cried shrilly and quivering from head to foot from mingled anger and grief. "You have broken mamma's heart, and it breaks mine, too, to see her looking so crushed and getting so white and thin. And now you are going to put this open disgrace upon her—upon us both—just because you are tired of her and think you like some one else better. I do love my mother—she is the dearest mother in the world, and I'm glad you're going. I—I don't care if I never——"
Her voice broke sharply, at this point, into something very like a shriek. She had wrought herself up to a frenzy of excitement, and now, with great sobs shaking her slight form like a reed, she turned abruptly away, and dashed wildly out of the room, slamming the door violently behind her.