“Papa,” said Frances, “a great deal of harm has been done by keeping me ignorant. I want you to show me mamma’s letter. Unless I see it, how can I know?”
This pulled him up abruptly and checked the softening mood. “Your mother’s letter,” he said, “goes over a great deal of old ground. I don’t see that it could do you any good. It appears I promised—what Constance told you, with her usual coolness—that one of you should be always left with her. Perhaps that was foolish.”
“Surely, papa, it was just.”
“Well, I thought so at the time. I wanted to do what was right. But there was no right in the matter. I had a perfect right to take you both away, to bring you up as I pleased. It would have been better, perhaps, had I done what the law authorised me to do. However, that need not be gone into now. What your sister said was quite true. You are at an age when you are supposed to be able to judge for yourself, and nobody in the world can force you to go where you don’t want to go.”
“But if you promised, and if—my mother trusted to your promise?” There was something more solemn in that title than to say “mamma.” It seemed easier to apply it to the unknown.
“I won’t have you made a sacrifice of on my account,” he said, hastily.
He was surprised by her composure, by that unwonted light in her eyes. She answered him with great gravity, slowly, as if conscious of the importance of her conclusion. “It would be no sacrifice,” she said.
Waring, there could be no doubt, was very much startled. He could not believe his ears. “No sacrifice? Do you mean to say that you want to leave me?” he cried.
“No, papa: that is, I did not. I knew nothing. But now that I know, if my mother wants me, I will go to her. It is my duty. And I should like it,” she added, after a pause.
Waring was dumb with surprise and dismay. He stared at her, scarcely able to believe that she could understand what she was saying—he, who had been afraid to suggest anything of the kind, who had thought of Andromeda and the virgins who were sacrificed to the dragon. He gazed aghast at this new aspect of the face with which he was so familiar, the uplifted head and shining eyes. He could not believe that this was Frances, his always docile, submissive, unemancipated girl.