Olivia had that day perhaps the bitterest of her life. With love outside—calling in the evening and fluting in the bower, and ever (as she thought) occupied with her image even when farther apart—she had little fault to find with the shabby interior of her home. Now that love was lost, she sat with her father, oppressed and cold as it had been a vault. Even in his preoccupation he could not fail to see how ill she seemed that morning: it appeared to him that she had the look of a mountain birch stricken by the first of wintry weather.
“My dear,” he said, with a tenderness that had been some time absent from their relations, “you must be taking a change of air. I'm a poor parent not to have seen before how much you need it.” He hastened to correct what he fancied from her face was a misapprehension. “I am speaking for your red cheeks, my dear, believe me; I'm wae to see you like that.”
“I will do whatever you wish, father,” said Olivia in much agitation. Coerced she was iron, coaxed she was clay. “I have not been a very good daughter to you, father; after this I will be trying to be better.”
His face reddened; his heart beat at this capitulation of his rebel: he rose from his chair and took her into his arms—an odd display for a man so long stone-cold but to his dreams.
“My dear, my dear!” said he, “but in one detail that need never again be named between us two, you have been the best of girls, and, God knows, I am not the pattern parent!”
Her arm went round his neck, and she wept on his breast.
“Sour and dour—” said he.
“No, no!” she cried.
“And poor to penury.”
“All the more need for a loving child. There are only the two of us.”