“You and I have managed to drift quite apart, but I am your father and must think for you. What are you going to do, when I am gone, if you don’t get some good man to take care of you?”
She looked at him rather pityingly. It was such a futile question. Her undeveloped sympathies saw only its ludicrous, not its pathetic side.
“Oh, I shall marry some day,” she said, lightly. “You need have no fear of that.”
“Ay. But whom?”
She shrugged her shoulders and tapped her toe on the carpet with a shade of irritation. It was ridiculous to stand there like a tableau vivant, holding her father’s hand.
“Think of Simeon Goldberg, a good friend, a man not so careless in observance of the Law as we—but still of the Reformed faith—and worth”—his voice grew unconsciously reverential—“five hundred thousand pounds, if he’s worth a penny.”
The girl’s eyes flashed for a second, then grew again contemptuous.
“It’s an absolute impossibility. You must let this drop, papa. We don’t live in the Middle Ages when you could put me on bread and water and lock me up until I consented; or in patriarchal times, when you could curse me for disobeying you—so why discuss the matter further? I shall marry in my own good time. I am not the sort that old maids are made of.”
He released her hand and turned towards the table. “Very well,” he said, taking up a pen, “I will not force you. But remember that your choice among our people is limited.”
“I might choose outside them,” she said, pausing in her lazy walk towards the door.