“Presently ... presently! Tell me more!—I should have known of this sooner! If any misunderstanding has arisen between you and one who loves you—and who could fail to love you?—it might have been cleared away by the exercise of a little tact—a measure of discrimination. But you, Ada—you to be despised and slighted! You, to give your love to one who makes no return!... The thought is incredible ... it bewilders and astounds me. Perhaps I err through excess of pride in you, but I cannot take this in!”
“Listen to me, dear, and you will understand more clearly....”
The face of the speaker was set to the desperate effort. Unseen by the dim eyes of the listener, the pang of self-revelation contracted and wrung it; the anguish of the confession blanched it to a deadly white.
“This is not a question of being appreciated or not appreciated, valued or undervalued. Your daughter, of whom you are so proud, threw away her heart unasked; and on the strength of a single meeting, built up the flimsy fabric of her house of dreams. To-night I met the man again, and the charm was broken. I saw him, not as I had imagined him to be, but as he is! Not the young Bayard of my belief, but the beau chevalier of Paris salons; not as the man of unstained honor and high ideals, but as the attaché of the Elysée, the servant of its unprincipled master—the open lover of Madame de Roux.”
She hid her face, but her shoulders shook with weeping, and little streams of bright tears trickled between the slender white jeweled fingers, and were lost amidst the snowy laces of her dress.
“Again, I say that I cannot conceive it!” the mother faltered. “The man was hardly known to you?...”
“I had heard him glowingly described and fondly praised by one who loved him....”
“He is a foreigner?... A Frenchman?... A Roman Catholic?...”
“He is a Bavarian Swiss by birth; French by naturalization and education, and a Catholic, without doubt.”
“And had he asked you, you would have left us all to follow him?”